Presentation - Crafting and Neurodivergent Identities: Bronagh Lee, Render Reid and Fáin

Venue: Meeting Room 7, UCD Student Centre                 3:20pm - 4:10pm

Bronagh Lee (She/Her) 

Bronagh Lee is an Irish artist and illustrator living in Dublin, Ireland. Her work is playful, whimsical, and fluid, usually drawing on themes of nature, the human experience, and the connection between the two. As well as working on children’s books and project work, Bronagh runs her own shop selling art prints, stationery and accessories. Bronagh is autistic and being late diagnosed, she is passionate about raising awareness and breaking stereotypes with the hope that more neurodivergent people can have access to support, valuable knowledge for their experience and a sense of community.

Render Reid (They/Them)

Render Reid is the owner and artist behind Render’s Rendering, a craft-based business that provides stim tools, jewelry and other wearables. They’ve been a professional artist for the better part of a decade, founding their current business in 2022 after moving to Dublin to pursue higher education. They earned their bachelor's degree in animation from Ballyfermot College of Further Education in April 2024 and have been running Render’s Rendering full time ever since. With the help of their fantastic team, they vended at 18 events last year across five different countries, including Germany’s Dokomi, which saw over 215,000 attendees. Render’s crafting expertise ranges from epoxy and leatherwork to extracting broken circuit boards to transform into jewelry. They have sold everything from watercolour paintings to fully transformed denim jackets. Officially Render’s diagnosed with dyspraxia however it is safe to suspect they are also autistic and have ADHD.

Fáin (They/Them)

Fáin is a crafter and a storyteller who specialises in being "a dirty filthy scavenger". Practicing a wide variety of different crafts from puppetry, to modifying clothing, to kitbashing and even making their own disability aids the only consistent threads are a certain irreverent style and a tendency to use whatever bits of scrap are on hand because it costs less money that way. Fáin has been known to utilise broken umbrellas, twigs from their garden, fire place ash, broken toys and animal bones in their projects and they are completely unafraid to butcher old appliances and clothes for spare parts.