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Build Your Own Deaf Museum

Build Your Own Deaf Museum

3. Logo Deaf Museums Project

Build Your Own Deaf Museum: A Deaf Museums Checklist

February 2022, Liesbeth Pyfers


This checklist was made at the request of a Facebook contact.

It is just a checklist of things you will have to consider, decisions that you will have to make if you are thinking about starting your own Deaf Museum.

Adapt the questions and decisions to your circumstances and interests. Add your own common sense. Consult friends, networks, professionals. 

The checklist was written for someone who had access to a old photos. The checklist can be used also for other materials - magazines, videos, objects. - but you will have to adapt them to fit your situation.   

And please: do send feedback? What works, doesn’t work? What did I forget? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Stage 1: Planning

1. Your Budget

How much time, money do you want to spend on this? Keep this in mind, when you plan your next steps.

2. Your Objective

Will this be a hobby, are you going to apply for funding, or will this have to be a self-supporting Museum?

- A hobby: try and find some like-minded people to help you.
- You will apply for funding for your Museum: look for funding options, make a professional business plan, be patient. This can take a long time.
- A self-supporting Museum? Make a business plan, do market research. What will be the costs?  What can you charge? How many visitors will you need?

and/or: contact an existing Deaf or mainstream museum and ask if they are interested in your collection. 
and/or: consider alternatives. A photobook? A YouTube video? A documentary?

3. Your Story

Decide what story you want to tell. What do you want people to see, experience, learn, remember after visiting your museum?

4. Your Materials

What photos do you need to tell your story?

The photos that you want to use: do you own them? Do you have to collect them? Borrow them Buy them?

Do you have the copyrights? You cannot publish photos if you don't have the copyrights. Two exceptions: the photos are already in the public domain, and/or the copyrights have expired. Usually copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years.

 What about GDPR? GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation - or similar legislation. It protects the rights of the people who can be identified in a photo or video. You cannot publish photos or videos without their  permission.

5. Your Location

If you want our museum to be a self-supporting museum, you’ll need large numbers of visitors, an attractive easy to reach location with good facilities. 

If your museum is more like a hobby and a few visitors a month are OK: find a pace for instance in a Deaf club, a school, a community center, your garage that is (almost) free. 

Or: make your museum a virtual museum on the internet. 

Step 2: Production

6. Preserve, protect

Scan the photos. Do it yourself by hand  or find a professional service, a museum or a university to do it for you.

Store the digitized images safely, online or on a hard disk. Better yet: do both.

 7. Catalogue

Catalogue your photos. Number them, give them a name, a description, a year, a link to the digital file.

8. Select

Select the photos that will tell your story. It is often better to use a few very good photos than to use large numbers.

9. Display

Decide how you are going to display the photos, in your physical museum or online. 

Visit museums for inspiration: online museums and physical museums.

Physical: look at display options. Find out what it costs to have photos  printed in a large size. Find out about display panels. 

Online: Find someone to make you a website or find an online platform where you can publish your photos for free.  
Pinterest? Instagram? Historypin?  Check out the resources on this website for more options.

10. Accessibility

Think about accessibility. What can you do to make your museum accessible to people with visual disabilities? Elderly people? People with physical disabilities?

11. Information

Write an information label for each photo Make the labels informative - for everyone. So not just the date and the location. Make each photo tell a story. Or: find the people who can tell you the story of each photo. Write these stories down or record them on video. Make these stories available in your museum. In a physical musuem, you can add video screens or monitors. Or you can use QR codes that people can scan with their cell phone to see the videos online.

With videos: add  transcripts that blind people can access the information. If videos are signed: add subtitles for people who do not know sign language. If stories are spoken or written: add a sign language translation.

If it is a physical museum: think about tour guides.

Step 3: Open

12. Name and Logo

Choose a name and a logo for your museum.

13. Advertise

Advertise. Use social media, networks, print media. Continue to do this, always. Actively.

14. Celebrate

Organize a festive opening. Invite everyone who helped. Invite important people, trendsetters.

15. Monitor

Keep track of visitors, ask for feedback, check what works, doesn’t work. 

16. Improve, grow, keep going

Keep working on your exhibition, make improvements, add new materials, organize events so that people will not forget about you, so that you will continue to attract new and old visitors. 

Plan for the future. 

Quotes:

  • “Stories of disability are largely absent from museum displays. Where they appear, they often reflect deeply entrenched, negative attitudes towards physical and mental difference. Research reveals that museums don’t simply reflect attitudes; they are active in shaping conversations about difference.
    Projects created with disabled people show that museums hold enormous potential to shape more progressive, accurate and respectful ways of understanding human diversity. Why wouldn’t we take up this opportunity? ”
    Richard Sandell, co-director, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester

  • "Opening ourselves to the Deaf community, listening to and respecting them as co-creators and experts telling the stories they want told, makes our practice richer, and has ongoing positive effects for the community.
    These embryonic relationships hopefully encourage Deaf people to feel welcome in our space — it’s their space too.
    For both side, communities and museum professionals, while genuinely, openly and truly committing to working together can be time-consuming, it repays any investment many-fold."
    Corinne Ball: ‘Expressing ourselves’: creating a Deaf exhibition", 2020
  • "As recently as the 1970s, deaf history did not exist. There were available sketches of various hearing men, primarily teachers, who were credited with bringing knowledge and enlightenment to generations of deaf children, but deaf adults were absent."

    In: Preface to: "Deaf History Unvailed, Interpretations from the New Scholarship". John Vickrey van Cleve, editor
    Publisher: Gallaudet University Press, 1993
  • "Museums can increase our sense of wellbeing, help us feel proud of where we have come from, and inspire, challenge and stimulate us."
    Source: Museums Change Lives
  • "For many members of the Deaf community their shared history is both personal and social. Deaf people will have gone to the same school, in many cases boarding schools where most of their younger lives will have been spent together, and then met again at their Deaf clubs, Deaf social events, reunions and other more personal events.
    One of the first things a Deaf person will often ask on meeting, before asking your name, is what school or Deaf club you go to. Making this connection is an important part of any greeting, as it will then help an individual to understand what shared history or people in common you may have."
    from: The Cultural Model of Deafness
  • "Deaf mute, deaf and dumb, hearing impaired – the choices are many and not without consequences. Words have many meanings, they convey attitudes and prejudices and may hurt, even when used in a well-intended context."
    Hanna Mellemsether, in:  Re-presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum, 2013
  • "The most significant function of museums is as centres for cultural democracy, where children and adults learn through practical experience that we all have cultural rights. Having the opportunity to create, and to give to others, may be one of our greatest sources of fulfilment. Culture is everywhere and is created by everyone."
    Source: A manifesto for museum learning and engagement
  • “One story makes you weak. But as soon as we have one-hundred stories, you will be strong.”
    Chris Cleave in "Little Bee", 2008
  • "The UN Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community”. This is based on the principle that citizens are not just consumers of cultural capital created by others; we have agency and the right to contribute through culture to the wider good of society."
    Source: A manifesto for museum learning and engagement
  • “If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.”
    Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
  • "This (Deaf) Museum is not intended as a casual show, to be seen once and forgotten. Its pretensions are nobler; it has a humanitarian aim. By its solid and tangible evidences, making history memorable and attractive by illustration, it serves a double purpose: to dispel ignorance and prejudice regarding the deaf, and to raise the victims of this prejudice and ignorance to their true level in society."
    The British Deaf Monthly, Vol. VI (p.265) 1897. In: Deaf Museums and Archival Centres, 2006
  • "Histories have for too long emphasized the controversies over communication methods and the accomplishments of hearing people in the education of deaf students, with inadequate attention paid to those deaf individuals who created communication bridges and distinguished themselves as change agents in their respective field of endeavour."
    from: Harry G. Lang, Bonny Meath-Lang: Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences, 1995
  • "The Deaf community is international. What binds Deaf people, despite their different national sign languages, is their shared visual communication, history, cultural activities, and the need for a Deaf “space” where people come together."

    from: The Cultural Model of Deafness
  • "What has become clear is that museums don’t just function as custodians of the past anymore; instead, they have embraced their responsibility towards the communities of the present: a responsibility to represent them, to speak to them, and to be open to dialogue with them."
    Tim Deakin, August 2021
  • "Beyond works of art and objects, museums collect shared heritage, memories and living cultures as well as what we call intangible collectables."
    Source: We are Museums

  • the past can hurt

    From: Walt Disney, The Lion King

  • "It was only during the past decade that recognition of the importance of preserving Deaf history has emerged. In the main, Deaf heritage, culture and folklore has been passed down from generation to generation via the medium of sign language and fingerspelling. (..) It is also vital that the history of Deaf people is made available to future generations, especially Deaf schoolchildren as part of their history lessons."
    A. Murray Holmes,  in: Cruel Legacy, an introduction of Deaf people in history, by A.F. Dimmock, 1993
  • "Museums can increase our sense of wellbeing, help us feel proud of where we have come from, and inspire, challenge and stimulate us."
    Source: https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/museums-change-lives/
  • "The Finnish Museum of the Deaf) was founded by deaf people, and, thus, its task has been to strengthen their identity and historical communality.

    Most of our materials have a connection to the key experiences that generations of deaf people have shared. These are important in understanding the past and keeping the collective memory alive."
    In: TIINA NAUKKARINEN, Finnish Museum of the Deaf: Presenting the Life of Carl Oscar Malm (1826–1863)
  • "Inclusion is moving from “we tolerate your presence” to “we WANT you here with us”.
    Jillian Enright in The Social Model of Disability, 2021
  • "After all, we are all of us explorers, and we all have much to bring to each other from our own
    journeyings."
    Ladd, P. (2003). Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood.
  • "Until the fall semester of 1986, the history department at Gallaudet University had never before offered a course in the history of deaf people.
    In the 122 years, to that point, since the founding of the university, which was specifically intended for the education of deaf peoples, no one had ever taught a course about this very group of people.
    In all of those years the history department had offered courses on a wide range of topics but never deaf history. "
    ENNIS, WILLIAM T., et al. “A Conversation: Looking Back on 25 Years of A Place of Their Own.” Sign Language Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2016, pp. 26–41. 
  • "Access to and participation in culture is a basic human right. Everyone has a right to representation and agency in museums, and communities should have the power to decide how they engage."
    Source: A manifesto for museum learning and engagement
  • "An important matter for any minority group is that written documents in public archives are often drawn up by the majority group and do not always reflect a minority as it sees itself. Thus, preserving sign language narration is of the utmost importance and a challenge to those working in the field of Deaf history."
    In: TIINA NAUKKARINEN, Finnish Museum of the Deaf: Presenting the Life of Carl Oscar Malm (1826–1863)
  • "Deaf people have always had a sense of their history as it was being passed down in stories told by generations of students walking in the hallways of their residential schools and by others who congregated in their clubs, ran associations, attended religious services, and played in sporting events.
    With these activities, the deaf community exhibited hallmarks of agency — an effort to maintain their social, cultural, and political autonomy amid intense pressure to conform as hearing, speaking people."
    BRIAN H. GREENWALD AND JOSEPH J. MURRAY, in: Sign Language Studies, Volume 17, Number 1, Fall 2016
  • "Nina Simon has described true inclusion in a museum context as occurring when museums value the diversity in their audience, value those individuals’ potential and contributions, when they actively link those diverse people across differences, and when the organisation reaches out with generosity and curiosity at the core.
    On a practical level this sort of museum practice would see widespread inclusion of people with disabilities in the planning of museum exhibitions, on museum boards and steering committees, and working in curatorial roles."
    In: Corinne Ball: Expressing Ourselves, 2020
  • "And yet, even within a large and, in many ways, traditional organization such as this (Trøndelag Folk Museum, Norway), the museum's encounter with Deaf culture contributed to profound changes and a process, still underway, which challenges our own understanding of what a museum is today, our role in society and our obligations towards more diverse audiences than those we had previously engaged or even recognized."
    Hanna Mellemsether, in:  Re-presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum, 2013