Natasha Trotman

Natasha is an artist, inclusive designer, maker and researcher whose work focuses on mental difference and neurodiversity as a way to foster new conversations and new approaches to the world around us. Her work examines different ways of experiencing and processing the world – from people with hidden disabilities and neurodivergent communities such as people with dyspraxia and autism, through to people living with dementia; she also works with neurotypical people.

Natasha studied Information Experience Design (IED) at the Royal College of Art and has a Masters degree in IED, with a background in Graphic design, Inclusive Design and Data and Systems analysis from Oxford. She is also a special educational needs/disability (SEN/D) practitioner working with children and young people with disabilities. Combining these various strands that she called transcendence, Natasha is able to hover over her varying skill set; creating interactive, playful provocations, objects and creative dialogues which invites audiences to sense and explore the world differently, building empathy, growing sensory repertoires and expanding sensory lexicons.

She has exhibited widely, creating sensory workshops and exhibits at huge cultural institutions and organisations including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The London Design Biennale at Somerset House, the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain. This year Natasha has been working as a Research Associate at The Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Inclusive Design as well as at The Wellcome Collection Hub on their Design and The Mind Research project. She recently co-authored a universal design and higher education in transformation (UDHEIT) paper on co-creating with neurodiverse communities.

Natasha is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Member of the Chartered Society of designers and has been honoured at 10 and 11 Downing Street. Natasha is currently an artist in residence at Somerset House’s studio 48 and has been selected as a 10×10 emerging Artist by the British council and will be featured in this year’s London Design Festival.