Lived Fiction at the Lowry - 17 October
Lived Fiction inclusive dance performance - the Lowry - 17 October 2024
Stopgap Dance Company present 'Lived Fiction' - this contemporary, inclusive dance performance features Deaf, Disabled, neurodivergent and non-disabled creatives in a dance work that is deep with compassion for the human condition.
"The sensual choreography of Lived Fiction is rendered anew with evocative audio description, exquisite projection art and captioning ... experience dance from multiple perspectives and share in a future that is rich with the enterprise, potential, and power of diversity."
Performance includes audio description and captioning.
Further information and tickets available here: Lived Fiction – Stopgap (stopgapdance.com) and Lived Fiction | What's On | The Lowry
Pier 8
Salford
M50 3AZ
Poetry and Histories of British Sign Language
BSL Heritage: Poetry and Histories of British Sign Language
As part of the Manchester BSL Fest 2024, come and join us to find out more about the poetry and history of BSL at the Manchester Poetry Library. Includes performances by the BSL Poet Laureate.
Wednesday 24 April 3pm -5pm. Refreshments Available.
Tickets are free, but places are limited: please register HERE.
Come to find out more about the cultural heritage of BSL or to share your thoughts about a BSL poetry collection at Manchester Poetry Library!
- Performance by BSL Poet Laureate Kabir Kapoor
- Performance by VV artist Ish’s VV World
- Presentation: ‘1792 and the Boom of Modern BSL’, Peter Brown (City Lit)
- Introduction: Early Histories of Sign Language in the UK, Rosamund Oates (MMU)
- Discussion: A future BSL poetry at Manchester Poetry Library?
Poetry
The first BSL poet laureate, Kabir Kapoor, will be performing his signed poetry, which can be enjoyed by everyone.
Ish’s VV World will do a Visual Vernacular performance (find out more about VV here), drawing on a mix of mime, signs and bodily gestures.
History:
Deaf historian Peter Brown of City Lit in London will present on ‘1792 and the Boom of Modern BSL’.
Rosamund Oates (Manchester Met University) will share some of her research into deafness before 1760. https://twitter.com/DrRosamundOates
After the performances, we will discuss the possibility of a BSL collection of poetry at Manchester Met University and Manchester Poetry Library: we would like your thoughts!
Event open to everyone. This event will be in British Sign Language and English, with interpreters for both. Wheelchair accessible. For other access requirements, please be in touch: email poetrylibrary@mmu.ac.uk or call 0161 247 6106 and we’ll be happy to support you.
Supported by the British Academy and Race, Genders and Sexualities Research Group, MMU.
AD: 17th century book with drawings of man making different gestures, described in Latin.
These workshops are being funded by;
Signs of the Times 21th February
A Hands-On Experience of the Past with Artist Christopher Sacre.
Come and find out about the past, explore the museum, and create your own artwork!
Christopher Sacre of See and Create is a Deaf Artist using BSL and English.
He uses the visual world to explore heritage and museums and will run creative workshops
during the February half-term at Ordsall Hall and Salford Art Gallery and Museum.
WORKSHOP1
DATE: 21 February: Salford Art Museum & Gallery: Animals
AM. 10 am: Workshop for D/deaf, Hard of Hearing and CODA children and families.
Please pre-register HERE. (Best suited to ages 8+) Delivered in English, with BSL support.
PM. 2-4: Drop-in session for all (best suited for ages 5+). Booking is not necessary;
more information HERE.
Free entry: BOOK HERE FOR MORNING WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP2
DATE: 22 February: Ordsall Hall: Patterns and Portraits
AM. 10 am: Workshop for D/deaf, Hard of Hearing and CODA children and families.
Please pre-register HERE (Best suited to ages 8+). Delivered in English, with BSL support.
PM. 2-4: Drop-in sessions for all (best suited for ages 5+) Booking is not necessary;
more information HERE
Free entry: BOOK HERE FOR MORNING WORKSHOP
These workshops are being funded
by the British Academy.
Sound & Heritage 6th Dec
Public Discussion
A public discussion exploring how we can use sound technology to access heritage to celebrate Disability History Month.
Panellists from Disabled People’s Archives, Vocal Eyes, Archives + and the Universities of York and Liverpool. Performance by leading Drum & Base artist ARTILECT.
DATE: Manchester Poetry Library 3-6 pm Wednesday 6 December.
Tickets are free and open to everyone.
Please register your interest here @ bit.ly/soundheritage.
For more information, contact Mohammed.Khan@mmu.ac.uk
SUZANNE.CLOVES@stu.mmu.ac.uk or r.oates@mmu.ac.uk.
With the support of Past & Present, Leverhulme Trust, Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage.
Disability History Month 4th Dec
Dr Rosamund Oates will be giving an online public lecture to celebrate UK Disability History Month
Members of the Culture of Disability research cluster Rosamund Oates and Nadia Tira will be part of GMCDP and Manchester City Council’s celebration of International Day of Disabled People at Manchester Central Library, 4 December.
DATE: 04 December
Deafness in Tudor and Stuart England
Dr Rosamund Oates will be giving an online public lecture to celebrate UK Disability History Month
She explores the experiences of deaf men, women and children in early modern England, showing the long history of sign language.
This lecture will have BSL interpretation and captions.
DATE: 22 November
Votives in Manchester: International Day of Disabled People 2021
Cultures of Disability Past Events
Inspired by Emma-Jayne Graham’s lecture on votives in Ancient Rome, Venture Arts developed a workshop with Manchester Histories on votives which took place at Manchester’s celebration of IDDP21, Dr Graham’s work explores the experience of disability in Rome through the models of body parts which were left at shrines. These body parts often represented impairments that visitors wanted healing and included arms, legs, feet and ears. At Manchester Central Library, participants were able to create their own clay votives inspired by their experiences of perceived impairment and disability.
To find out more about votives in the Ancient world, you can watch Emma-Jayne’s lecture here. A shorter version is also available at Manchester Central Library with Archives+ on the listening pods.
Venture Arts is an award-winning charity, working with artists with learning disabilities. The workshop was funded by Manchester Metropolitan University.
Hearing Happiness
Cultures of Disability Past Events
Our celebrations of UK Disability History Month started with an entertaining and informative talk by Professor Jaipreet Virdi, an award-winning activist, writer and historian. Professor Virdi presented compelling arguments about ideas of disability and views of deafness in 20th-century America and explored the evolution of hearing aids.
Dr. Jaipreet Virdi (University of Delaware) is an award-winning historian who explores how medicine and technology affect the lives of disabled people and recently published Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History (2020)
In this talk she examines the cures for deafness and the development of hearing aids in 20th-century America. She also discusses her own experience of hearing loss and deaf education.
Jaipreet Virdi’s talk launched Cultures of Disability’s celebration of UKDHM 2021, was a joint project with Manchester City Council , Manchester Met University and Manchester Libraries and is also available on Archives+. It is available here with BSL interpretation and captions.
If you missed the event, for a limited period you can watch the pre-recorded lecture here. This includes BSL interpretation and captions.
You can also find out more in Professor Verdi’s book, Hearing Happiness. Why not see what other events we are running to celebrate UKDHM?
Culture in Quarantine: A Manifesto for 2050
Cultures of Disability Past Events
Dr Kai Syng Tan, an artist based at MMU and a member of the ‘Cultures of Disability’ research group, was commissioned to produce a film for the BBC this summer as part of the BBC Arts’ Culture In Quarantine initiative, which has brought the arts into people’s homes during the lockdown.
Her film, How To Thrive In 2050! 8 Tentacular Workouts For A Tantalising Future! is available on the BBC i-player. It’s a call for action for a more creative, equitable and neuro-fantastic future by a ‘human-octopussy’, and is challenging, funny and inspiring.
Dr Kai Syng Tan is one of twelve D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled professional artists based in England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland who have been commissioned to produce new film and audio works for BBC platforms, many of which explore the experience of living through Covid-19.
Lamia Dabboussy, BBC Head of Arts says: “This batch of commissions from artists across the country showcases the breadth of inspiring work we’ve all missed experiencing over this past lockdown year”
How to Thrive in 2050! 8 Tentacular Workouts For A Tantalising Future! is a brilliant and creative film – congratulations to Dr Kai Syng Tan! For more of her work see her webpage.
Deafness and Salvation in Early Modern Europe
Cultures of Disability Past Events
Early Modern Europe was an aural world. Despite the invention of print and the rise in literacy, speech was still the main form of communication: it was at the heart of religious worship and legal practice. In a world based around the spoken word, what about those who struggled to hear or who couldn’t speak?
Early modern priests worried about whether prelingually deaf people could enter heaven. A stumbling block for many was the assertion by St Paul that ‘faith comes by hearing’ and ‘by the mouth, confession is made unto salvation’: how could deaf men and women either come to know God or perform the necessary sacraments?
It was a problem that troubled Catholics and Protestants: they worried about how to communicate with deaf and deafened people, and how to help those same people to take part in Church sacraments. Dominican Friars – who had a tradition of using their fingers to remember parts of their sermons – introduced finger spelling to help men and women make their confessions when speech was not possible. In the following centuries, a Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce de Leon, taught deaf children to lip read and so to communicate by ‘speaking’ in Spanish. As a result, deaf children of Spanish noblemen were able to make wills, inherit their parents’ wealth, make confession and attend Church services. Pedro Ponce de Leon’s efforts were carried on in Spain by Juan Pablo Bonet, who published a guide to teaching deaf children to ‘speak’: Reduccion de Las Letras (1620).1
These early efforts at Deaf Education prefigured the Oralist movement of the nineteenth century, when prelingually deaf children were encouraged to speak and lipread in their native languages rather than using sign language, but at the same time as Spanish children were being taught to speak vocally, elsewhere in Europe sign language was being recognised as a valid alternative to oral speech in Church ceremonies.
Catholics and Protestants ensured deaf signers could take part in Church ceremonies
— Marc Scott, Executive Officer
In seventeenth-century Geneva, the Catholic Bishop, Francis de Sales prepared a prelingually deaf boy, Martin, for communion using sign language. Martin ‘could express by signs good and evil thoughts of the mind, perfect and imperfect consent of the will, and the difference between mortal and venial sin’. In seventeenth-century Protestant England, it was reported that the ‘gestures and zealous signs’ of a prelingually deaf gentleman, Edward Gostwicke, ‘’procur’d and allow’d him admittance to sermons, to prayers [and] to the Lord’s supper’. Increase Mather recorded a prelingually deaf woman taking the Eucharist in colonial America, writing that those ‘born, or by any accident made Deaf and Dumb … [who are] able by signs (which are analogous to verbal expressions) to declare their knowledge and faith; may as freely be received to the Lords supper as any that shall orally make the like profession.’
Language, of course, relies on mutual understanding and so for the signs to have a legal status they needed to be agreed and accepted by all the parties involved – notably the hearing ministers. Two marriages in early modern England show the problems – and benefits – of using sign language as an alternative to oral speech. In 1618, a prelingually deaf man, Thomas Speller, married Sara Earle after getting permission from the chancellor of the diocese of London and the Lord Chief Justice, who agreed in advance the signs that Speller would use to show his consent. Fifty years earlier in Leicestershire, another prelingually deaf man, Thomas Tilsye, married using sign language. To show his willingness to marry his bride, Ursula Russell, he enacted elements of the wedding ceremony: ‘first, he embraced her with his arms, and took her by the hand, put a ring upon her finger, and laid his hand upon her heart, and held his hands towards heaven; and to show his continuance to dwell with her to his life’s end, he did it by closing of his eyes with his hands, and digging out of the earth with his foot, and pulling as though he would ring a bell’.