Liesbeth:
Good afternoon, Joanna and Daniele. I'd like to interview you about your exhibition plans. First let me introduce myself: Liesbeth Pyfers from the Netherlands.
I'm the project manager of the Deaf Museums project. Joanna, Daniele, can you introduce yourselves?
Daniele:
Hello. My name is Daniele Lerose, this is my sign name and I work here at equalizent.
My position is working on any film and communications and on the Erasmus+ projects.
Joanna:
Hello my name is Joanna, my sign name is Joanna. I'm British born and I live in Austria. I'm responsible for Erasmus+ projects at equalizent, and above all the contact person in Austria for the Deaf Museums project.
Liesbeth:
OK, thank you. My first question. We decided to develop exhibitions, each of the partners. How did you start?
Because it's easy to say: OK, you make an exhibition about Deaf History or Deaf Heritage, but you have to choose a topic. You have to think of how to do this. How did you start?
Joanna:
Shall I answer? OK, we had some ideas, so when you first proposed this project, our boss, the head of equalizent, Monika Haider, made some suggestions to us.
But we wanted to make sure that our production and development was as inclusive as possible, so we got a team together of people that normally work on Erasmus+ projects, mixed hearing and deaf, and we looked at Monika's ideas.
We developed our own ideas, through.. it's kind of a mix of all our suggestions.
Then after this workshop, which took place right at the beginning of the project, in the process of collecting materials we found that we started to slightly change the focus, we also narrowed down the focus.
So originally, we had more topics and now we've narrowed them down . But Daniele is going to say more about this in a minute.
Daniele:
Yes, indeed. We had the idea to have an exposition in regards to Deaf history. However, once we talked in our team, we came up with four themes: the social life of Deaf people, art of the Deaf, what are some meaningful changes that have happened, so the evolution of the Deaf community. And also people's professional work situation.
So these were the original four themes that we wanted to include in the exhibition.
We looked at possible people that we wanted to interview. We then contacted these people and interviewed them.
Of course, because of Corona, we had to reduce the amount of people we want to interview.
But we realized during the interview process, we also had further changes and adaptations. And so, it's through the interviews that we came to different questions that we ended up asking the interviewees.
Liesbeth:
Yeah, it is very much work in progress. We develop ideas and then move on. And maybe change things, and learn more. But you have a pretty good idea of what your exhibition will be like, don't you? So what will people see when they go into your exhibition, because it will not be a website.
It will be a real exhibition space where people go in. And then.. what?
Daniele:
Yes, indeed. We wanted to make sure that we had a physical exhibition, if you will a live one, if you would say. But we also want to actually have a hybrid, because we also want to have a piece that's done online that's interactive, where they can have a QR code, that they then take a picture of. So there is a part of it that's online and a part of it in person. They can experience things both live and through the QR code.
Joanna, do you want to add anything to that?
Joanna:
Yeah, we have an exhibition already, which is called Hands Up! With Hands Up! the focus is hearing people, and is enabling hearing people an insight into the Deaf world.
However, we wanted to, I think however we wanted to add to this exhibition, with a real focus on the Deaf community and outputs that were created by the Deaf community. Not just sensitization. So our exhibition, like like Daniele says, is a hybrid. Our physical exhibition will initially be in our main building. So we have exhibition space in our offices, which is the 200 year old former stables, Biedermeier stables.
A very beautiful building and very warm space. So a physical exhibition, it will look great, and there will be a hybrid element through QR codes, where people can see the interviews or the video material directly on their handheld devices.
And just an additional thing about handheld devices for deaf people. It's such an important enabling tool, to be able to use a smartphone communication, video communication.
A real revolution in the last 20 years. So everybody uses a smartphone, everybody has a smartphone, and we want to make sure that the exhibition is available in your pocket.
Liesbeth:
Wow, those are really ambitious plans, because there'll be a lot of technology involved and I think that is important. Because of course that is the way forward.
It will be very interesting to learn more about your exhibition and your work on it.
Do you want to add anything now? Something I forgot to ask?
Daniele:
What I'd like to add is that the process of how we are working has really been something we've learned a lot about. We have lots of different materials, photographs, text. We have so much information and also so much information from the political life. We have so much cultural artefacts that we have access to.
We also want to make sure that we have access, we do have lots of work from our materials, from people that are from decades ago, from older people. So it's been quite a challenge to see how we're going to fit all this in.
Joanna:
Yes. It's also been a big challenge with Covid.
One of the reasons why handheld devices are so important is digital museums. And digital devices really enabled all of us. Not just in equalizent in Austria, to continue our lives under Covid. And we feel this needs to carry, on just because the Museum closes doesn't mean cultural life ends, or people don't want to have a cultural experience. So we we see the digitized process or digitalization as something positive to take from Covid - if there's anything positive you can take from Covid. One other thing is that Covid has meant that we haven't been able to access non-digitalized archives, or people who are older, to visit them. So we've had to work around a lot of these kind of restrictions with Covid, which I think in the future makes it all the more important that digital access becomes universal and more and we need to keep on promoting it.
Covid is making things very difficult for us.
Liesbeth:
OK, many, many more questions. But I'll ask those in a next episode of these interviews. For now, thank you very much and see you again next time!
Thank you!
Bye!