Image: from 'Deaf Explorer' for their 'Permission to Speak' DaDa Commission, part of our 'Translations' DaDaFest International Festival.
Following National BSL Day on 28 April, which commemorated the one year anniversary of the BSL Act, it's now time to celebrate Deaf Awareness Week!
Joining in with all the fab activity from the Deaf community and beyond, here's a look back at just some relevant resources, artists and organisations we've had the pleasure of working with at DaDa:
One of the many excellent tributes to National BSL Day came from our friends at Deafinitely Theatre, whose Artistic Director, Paula Garfield, was one of our guest panellists at our first hybrid festival in 2020.
See a video below from Paula Garfield to discover their history, and browse their blog here to find out more.
Another iconic Deaf-led organisation we've worked with is Deaf Rave, which provides entertainment with music, sign song and visual performances to an all-inclusive audience, globally and across the UK.
We had the privilege of hosting one of their raves right here in Liverpool as part of Liverpool International Music Festival. It both received national coverage and was a whole lot of fun!
Photo by Jack Morgan: Deaf Rave's Troi Lee at 2013's DaDaFest-hosted Deaf Rave at Circo, Albert Dock
In addition to DaDa showcasing countless influential artists within Deaf arts individually, one of our previous Artist Call Outs gave us the opportunity to work with Deaf Explorer, an exciting collective of both established and up and coming artists.
Among the amazing artists featured were Maral Mamaghanizadeh, David Ellington, Leigh Blake, Ishtiaq Hussain, Sahera Khan and Matthew Gurney (pictured below):
The collective's ‘Permission to Speak’ commission brought a radical approach to the theme of ‘Translation’, being a work for playback on digital devices that interrogated the authority and power of translation itself. Using a mock interview format, each artist represented the overlap of various social and political intersectional identities of deafness, race, faith, gender and sexuality.
Individually they revealed, that their art and language is subject to and dependant on nuanced translation, and together exposed the consensus within the whitewashed hearing world that there is one sign language, rather than a diverse creative force that has rich dialects.
Beyond the arts, popular Deaf news and blogging site, The Limping Chicken, is a Deaf-led journalistic resource that’s definitely worth a read.
Its editor, the filmmaker Charlie Swinburne, was a winner of a DaDaFest Writer’s Award all the way back in 2007 and has since gone on to play a part in groundbreaking Deaf representation on national television - including creating Rose Ayling-Ellis' character, Frankie, on Eastenders, and as Story Consultant on its special ‘silent episode’.
Make sure to sign up to our newsletter for more disability and Deaf arts news, and from all of us at DaDa – happy Deaf Awareness Week!