Safeguarding and Compliance
All workshops are delivered by a fully qualified art teacher with up-to-date DBS and safeguarding certification (2025), ensuring complete compliance with school safeguarding requirements.
Rachel Alleyne – Founder, Alleyne Art Academy
Rachel Alleyne is the founder of Alleyne Art Academy, an initiative dedicated to nurturing creativity, artistic confidence, and visual curiosity in young people. While Rachel is an accomplished fine artist, the guiding spirit of the Academy is not simply the production of artwork, but the sharing of artistic knowledge and the encouragement of the next generation to discover their own creative voice.
Trained at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1992 and 1998, Rachel completed a BA in Fine Art Painting in 1996 before continuing to an MA in Fine Art Painting in 1998. During her time at the Slade she studied under a distinguished group of artists and thinkers including Professor Bernard Cohen, Bruce McLean, David Hepher, Cathy de Monchaux, Andrew Stahl, Michael Newman and Ian McKeever. This rigorous training placed strong emphasis on observation, drawing from life, and the disciplined study of form.
Rachel began her early career as a figurative painter, spending countless hours drawing and painting from life. Although her personal practice now embraces a more abstract language, the discipline of figurative study continues to shape the way she sees, thinks, and constructs her paintings. She often reflects that the foundations of observation remain central to all artistic development, noting how many great painters—from Piet Mondrian to Stanley Spencer—began with strong formal training before evolving their own visual language.
Alongside her studio practice, Rachel has always felt a deep responsibility to pass on the knowledge and joy of art-making. Alleyne Art Academy reflects this commitment. Through workshops, competitions, resources, and school collaborations, the Academy aims to help children experience art not as something distant or difficult, but as a natural and expressive language available to everyone.
Rachel believes that creativity is one of the earliest forms of human communication. Drawing, colour and mark-making are instinctive ways for children to express ideas, emotions and imagination. With encouragement, observation and a few simple techniques, young artists quickly rediscover this visual language.
Rachel Alleyne has received several awards during her career, including the Dolbey Travel Scholarship, which enabled her to travel and exhibit in Barbados where she produced a celebrated series of seascape paintings. Her exhibition “In Turner’s Footsteps” was held at Tate Britain, London, acknowledging the continuing influence of J. M. W. Turner while celebrating contemporary artistic responses to landscape. Today her work is held in private collections both in the United Kingdom and internationally.
Through Alleyne Art Academy, Rachel continues to combine her professional artistic background with her passion for teaching, supporting children, schools, and families in exploring the creative possibilities of art.
'First breath'
Black ink drawings on watercolour paper. 2019
The Slade School of Fine Art Dolbey Travel Scholarship award.
The University Travel Scholarship award
The Swiss Tourist Board (Tate Gallery) travel award.
Shortlisted for the BBC Teachers Award in Art and Design 2007
She is currently visiting schools in the area of Wiltshire and and Berkshire to talk about her new children's colour book 'Bettina and Beatrix Mini Mixer!' with combined art workshops!
Contact the artist now for more details!
