Grace Attlee is an illustrator, cross-disciplinary facilitator, creative producer and mentor, with 15 years experience weaving threads between tech, fashion, activism, literature and visual culture.
She started out as community manager at a start-up, where open-source technology was being used to teach electronics to young people, make custom musical instruments and interactive installations. This kickstarted Grace's interest in creative pedagogy, and she went on to manage ambitious illustration and poetry projects with the likes of Apples and Snakes and The Face magazine, working with groups of young people and women.
Grace is interested in how different senses, materials and experiences meet; often working across drawing, text, animation and sound. She has illustrated record sleeves, designed festival stages, book covers, large-scale murals, provocative projections and educational resources, all with her distinctive colourful collage, bold line drawings and sharp sense of humour.
Grace teaches a course at Central Saint Martins, runs regular online writing and illustration workshops for domestic violence survivors and delivers in person workshops with young people. Her teaching style is playful and warm, and informed by popular culture, history, poetry, music and philosophy. She is skilled at curating experiences to stimulate and provoke her students, and encourages them to subvert and critique political structures.
Grace is also a trained mentor and coach, working predominantly with neurodivergent artists. She is currently Studio Manager at Translating Nature, a pioneering studio using data as an art material to better understand the living systems around us.
“Working with Grace on my book, PINCH ME, has been such a pleasure. She skilfully picked out the essential themes of my manuscript that she felt would work visually, creating a final cover image that perfectly fuses so many of its elements. Throughout the whole project, Grace kept me updated with her progress, and took on board my own thoughts and ideas along the way. I’m absolutely thrilled with the cover illustration - it’s been receiving as many compliments as the book itself!”
“On each occasion Grace worked with a group of women who were survivors of domestic abuse, some of whom experienced further marginalisation. Grace has a gentle but confident style when working with a group which at once encourages and challenges them to produce their best work. She has introduced participants to the world of visual art, which they previously felt excluded from. Our participants really enjoy and feel enriched by the sessions she leads.”
“We absolutely loved working with Grace. After one project, she was so brilliant that we asked her to stay on to produce our 40th anniversary project Future Voices, a complex project involving five partner organisations and 40 new poets. Grace is organised, efficient, and thoughtful - she supported everyone on the programme with a huge amount of care. Administratively, she delivered everything on time and within budget, plus she’s a great communicator making sure everyone in the team knew what was going on. I honestly can’t recommend working with Grace highly enough – she’s ace!”
hello@graceattlee.com