About the Graphic Change Academy
Who we areGraphic Change
Before the Academy, Cara Holland set up Graphic Change, her graphic recording and live illustration studio, in 2006. Starting part-time and with a handful of clients, over 20 years she has built an enviable client list and a reputation as a leading graphic recorder in the UK and globally.
Today she still works as a hands-on graphic recorder, illustrator and animated video creator. She works with people-focussed clients who range in size and sector but who all share an understanding of the value of communicating visually, human to human, when engaging their audience.
The Graphic Change Academy
Cara believes in the power of working visually because she’s seen the benefits for the people doing it, and the huge benefits of visual thinking for collaboration and communication in the workplace.
After years of training people in small groups in person, in 2014 Cara took her practical graphic recording expertise and training experience online and, alongside Natasha Holland, founded the Graphic Change Academy. The Academy enables Cara to train even more people to draw to explain, communicate and engage in their workplaces, from wherever they are.
Through the Graphic Change Academy, Cara and Natasha have trained individuals in 92 countries, including professional teams at PwC, Google and IBM.
Why I built the Graphic Change Academy
I was a Social Worker for 15 years. I started to work visually at work, running meetings, managing teams, delivering training. I figured it out alone, the hard way.
Within a year I’d gone part time and started Graphic Change. One year later I left work and was drawing full time. As my knowledge and skills grew I started to be hired by the likes of Google, Microsoft and the NHS.
I knew other people would benefit from learning these skills, that this wasn’t a mystical artistic gift, but about communication skills using simple drawing techniques. So I set out to prove anyone can learn to be a visual thinker.
I started offering face to face training. When people started flying in from other countries to my courses I realised I needed to take this online so that more people could access supportive, practitioner-led training without the travel and cost.
I’ve put everything I’ve learned into the courses in the Graphic Change Academy so you don’t have to figure it out the hard way on your own, or with shallow learning from quick videos or cheap, anonymous mass online courses.
Oh, and I was right. My years of training experience now have proved that you really don’t need to be an artist – you just have to believe in the power of working visually and learn simple, functional drawing to create impactful communications, deeper engagement and more effective collaboration with other people.
Who we are
Cara Holland
Head Visualizer
Cara is a leading graphic recorder and visual skills trainer in the UK today.
Since founding Graphic Change in 2006 she has drawn in some of the weirdest places (under the wing of Concorde, in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, in a morgue…) and with some of the best known brands in the world such as Playstation, the NHS and IKEA. A passionate practitioner, trainer and public speaker, Cara is a cheerleader for drawing in the workplace to help you think, engage and deliver better results.
In 2018 Cara published her first book Draw a Better Business to help small business owners and solopreneurs tackle business planning creatively and effectively.
You can find her over on Instagram and Substack, where she writes the JOTT (Journal of Tiny Things), the monthly Visual Edit and leads the graphic recorder club.
Natasha Holland
MX Director
Natasha is co-founder of the Graphic Change Academy and the techie behind Graphic Change.
After lots of trial and error with big online platform providers (you know, the ones that track your every move), in 2018 she built our own Academy and Community platforms (without AI) to deliver a student-friendly online experience that delights our students and members.
As a former global programme manager in the IKEA multiverse, Natasha is used to working visually in large organisations using creative graphic facilitation methods to get big, serious stuff done. In 2020 (post-Brexit and during Covid – great timing) she joined Graphic Change full time, joining the family business.
Now as MX (Member Experience) Director of Graphic Change, she’s the everyday support person for our students in the Academy and online Community. Still not replaced by a chatbot.
When she’s not at the end of an Academy support email you can find her on LinkedIn.
Our Ai policy
At Graphic Change we believe in human-centred communication. We believe in the power of human creativity. We will never use Ai image generation tools. We don’t need to.
In the Graphic Change Academy we use our innate human ability and our lived, real world experience to build visually-pleasing, effective courses that build up skill, confidences and techniques step by step and with practice, on a platform that is human-friendly and with support from people who know who you are as an individual student.
Not only do we not need Ai to do this, but we know that Ai copied from us in the first place. Our own flawed, amazing human brains were the original teachers and the original customer service providers, and are what Ai tries to emulate every day.
Ai is useful for many things, but if you want to really connect with people, hand-drawn images are a powerful way to reach your audience. In fact we know that audiences can feel the disconnect when you cut corners and use Ai. Organisations who want to connect with their audience on a human level don’t use Ai to get the results they need, they go straight to the source: creative, visual thinking humans.
Hello, that’s us. And it could be you.
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