Wayne Hill: Artist, poetic and dyslexic

Dyslexic Superpowers

Chris Cole summarises Wayne's message from the night

Wayne spoke of his learning journey through school. He remembered a couple of teachers that made a difference for him. One teacher let him do his artwork on a wall in the classroom.


As Wayne became older he realised that even though reading, spelling and writing were difficult for him (and still are) it didn’t define him. He spoke of how every dyslexic has a creativity with the way they think and that it’s important to find out what that is and to nurture it. Wayne found his ability to express and articulate for himself was through his artworks and his poetry.


Wayne read a few poems out to the group. With writing poetry, he finds words pop into his head and he “scribbles” these down. These are “formatted” for him by a person he sees at the local art centre.


Wayne had a very powerful message – look for your strengths. These define you more than what you struggle with. As adult dyslexics we tend to focus on what is hard and to help improve our self esteem we need that balance of seeing our whole self which includes our strengths.


NB: Creativity comes in many forms. It can be artwork, poems, working with materials, the ability to pull people together for a common cause, the ability to spread information, musical abilities, sporting abilities, engineering, coding etc