Marek:
Hello! Hello!
Welcome to this interview with Luigi. We'd like to know about your work for Deaf Museums and what you will be focusing on.
Luigi:
My name is Luigi and I grew up in Italy, but now I live here in the UK. I work at UCLan university here for some time now. For the Deaf Museums project, we came together to think about what exhibition we want to put together. We realized we wanted to do something different. We didn't want to focus on the same typical themes.
There are a lot of materials and books on deaf history and deaf culture. About the oral times and how sign language was forbidden, but we wanted to do something different.
So we decided to focus on a 60-year time frame. First looking at people from the past who we can interview, people from roughly 60 years ago. People before that unfortunately have passed away, so we wouldn't be able to interview them. So we want to look at the changes that have occurred in three time frames.
We first want to look at this with respect to Deaf space. In the past deaf people would come together at the Deaf Clubs and they would socialize in Deaf Clubs. Then if you look at the present day, that has changed. Deaf people are now coming together in pubs. That's a cultural adaptation, but that's where the Deaf people come together now. And if you we look at the future, if you already look at what has happened now during COVID, is that people are coming together online. So we want to look at it, kind of like a picture.
If you would flip a picture you see what happened in the old days and what is happening now. But then also look at what could be happening in the future.
So we're going to look at Deaf space and then we also want to look at accessibility. In the past, interpreters were people that were family members or hearing people that would help the deaf person. That's how deaf people gained access to information and the like. Now we have professional interpreters that we can hire, so that we are much more independent. But what will happen in the future? We'll be using avatars, that's something we'd like to look at.
The third theme we want to look at is deaf people's jobs and occupations. Again in the past, deaf people were more in the background. They would be in a back room, working as shoe smiths or carpenters. There would be a hearing person in the frontline, gathering the information and then passing that on to the deaf worker. However, today, there are deaf people working on television and they are public figures.
Marek:
Very interesting to see how you want to compare the different time frames. Very interesting. Great. Now that you're collecting information on these themes, do you have any advice or information for the people watching?
Luigi:
When we're looking at these three time frames, we're also focusing on improvements. For example, again with interpretation. In the past, deaf people were helped. However, now, through interpreters, deaf people can be more independent. They are more mobile. So when we put this exhibition together, we're first going to focus on an online exhibition.
We'll look at the three different time spans. So what we're imagining is that you can click on a button and then a screen will pop up and share information about a certain theme.
Then you could, per theme, have three buttons, for example, that are linked. You can click on the button and then people will be able to see: this is a situation from the past, and a situation from the present. We want to make sure that these film clips are very short, so that people stay interested and keep watching. The presentations can be about certain subjects or sports. Per theme, we want to look at the past present and future.
Once we've developed the online version, we want to then look at a physical exhibition. We think that we probably want to work with QR codes. When people come to the exhibition, maybe they look at a photo. Then there's a QR code that they can scan and get some additional information on their tablet or phone.
Marek:
Well, that's a great idea, to use QR codes in a physical exhibition. And I like when how for the online version, you'll have buttons that are linked.
Do you have any other information you want to share with us?
Luigi:
During the preparation time, last year, we had to do this during the COVID crisis and that proved to be quite challenging. We of course had limitations because of the COVID restrictions. We had lockdown periods. Then we wanted to conduct interviews, but we weren't able to do that live. So we really haven't been able to take the next step in the past year. We are looking forward to trying different interview styles. This summer, we plan to try a live interview and also one possibly online, with Zoom, and then find out what works best. Then we can finally go forward.
Marek:
Well, I hope you find a solution to your challenges. I'm sure there's many other people that have the same issues. If you find a solution you can share it with us the next time.
Thank you for the interview, and thank you for sharing the interesting information about your work.
Luigi:
Yes thank you for the interview as well.
Bye