My 'Stammer Situations' art project

2nd March 2022

Illustration student Alex Taylor tells us about raising stammering awareness with his art project.

I am a second year illustration student at Leeds Arts University and have created some illustrations showing how a stammer can be affected in a range of situations. 

The title of the piece is 'Stammer situations — Exploring the pace and differences between my stammer in common situations'. 

It was for a project we were given called 'Unseen stories', where we had to show something unseen about us in the form of a 'Data Visualisation'. This is a way of showing information to an audience in a visual way such as a graph, chart, even a weather map. I chose to focus on my stammer as even though people know about it, it's difficult for others to understand it and almost grasp the idea. I wanted the piece to be purely educational and show the viewer what a stammer is and how it can be affected in a range of situations.

Here's one of the data visualisations above. My stammer changes hugely depending on who I'm with and what I'm doing, so I wanted to show this using a GIF for three situations, with the text flowing in speech bubbles and producing itself in a different way for each one, almost forcing the reader to read them with a stammer. You can see the finished GIF gallery on my Behance page.

• Come to The Stammies, our online awards ceremony for stammering in film & TV, 16th March

Reaction

All of the feedback I've received from these pieces has been really positive, saying that they are really strong. I actually got a comment from somebody who said they've learnt something about stammering and felt it, which made me super happy as the whole point of these is to educate.

My project's even being included in a speech & language therapy university course here in Sheffield; my friend is a student on the course and was saying they don't really have anything to visually show a stammer, which results in some parts of the course being harder. So when I showed them the work, they knew straight away their tutors would love to see it! So I sent it off and they responded saying they'll try use it in September. 

Check out more of Alex's work on his instagram account @ajtaylor.design. 

If you have any stammering-related projects, artwork, poetry, music, etc you'd like to tell us about, email us at editor@stamma.org.