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Deaf in the Story – Visual Stories of an Invisible People

Deaf in the Story – Visual Stories of an Invisible People

Every person has a life story. We all have a story to tell – in fact a lot of stories – about our lives.

Each of us is also a part of many other people’s life stories. And it’s important for us to share these stories, so that we know where we fit into each other’s life stories.

Deaf people are part of the story of hearing people; and hearing people are part of the story of Deaf people. Deaf people are only too aware of this. But hearing people are often unaware of the Deaf people who live around them, or about their life stories.

Most of the big decisions in society are made by hearing people, who don’t know anything about the stories of Deaf people. So, often they make decisions that affect Deaf people, without any understanding of the impacts they can have on our lives.

That’s why BSL:UPTAKE and Heriot-Watt University worked with many partners to stage a special day of British Sign Language storytelling at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh on Saturday 5 November 2011 – ‘Deaf in the Story: Visual Stories of an Invisible People’. Funding for this came from Edinburgh Beltane – Beacon for Public Engagement.

Our partners included organisations from the Deaf world – Deaf History Scotland, Deaf Action, Scottish Council on Deafness, Donaldson’s School, and others – all part of the rich history of the Deaf community in Scotland. They all have stories to tell that can help the rest of society understand the Deaf community better.

But Deaf people are also part of the wider history and culture of Scotland, just as British Sign Language – BSL – is one of the many languages of Scotland. The more we know about and respect each other’s languages, the better we’ll understand each other’s stories – and the different kinds of lives we all lead.

So we worked with the Scottish Storytelling Centre, who appointed the first BSL storyteller in Scotland, Mark MacQueen; and the School of Scottish Studies Archives at Edinburgh University, to translate some of the marvellous Scottish stories in their collections into BSL. Some of these are being made available online for everybody to enjoy, on the BSL:UPTAKE website and elsewhere. Search online for the websites of all our partners to find out more about the wonderful stories they have to offer.

We hope these will give you some ideas as well, about the stories you too have to tell, whether in BSL, Scots, Gaelic, English – or whatever language comes most naturally to you.