Remembering Martin Hollins

Sheila’s husband (and Kathryn, Nigel, Emily and Abigail’s father) died peacefully on Sunday 12th January, after a long illness.

Martin has supported Beyond Words since the beginning, as a founder Trustee, and Sheila’s right hand man. He could often be seen at book launches and other events, supporting Sheila, cheering her on and being a general helper, driver and bag carrier when she travelled for work. As a founder Trustee, he contributed well to discussions at board meetings, as well as with financial support of the charity.

Martin had a career in science education, and taught all levels from Primary to teacher level, plus curriculum design. He was a keen artist, and extremely visually literate himself, and fully supported Beyond Words and the need for pictures in communication.

When their son Nigel was a child and was going away on an adventure holiday for the first time, Martin drew stick figure pictures to show Nigel what activities he would do during the week. This helped Nigel hugely and confirmed for Sheila and Martin how important visual communication is for someone who finds pictures easier to read than words. Sheila has spoken often about how, when she was developing the concept of Beyond Words, the fact that Nigel found it helpful to have pictures to explain what’s happening in his life, showed her how this could be used with other people with learning disabilities.