Louder is not always clearer - Waleslab blog #1

As I write this, we’re one and half days into Jonny Cotsen’s WalesLab, “Louder is not always clearer”, and we’ve covered so much ground already.  I’m working on the project as an Emerging Producer, but everyone in the team is getting involved in the activities as we attempt to explore how a non-deaf person can get a feel for what a deaf person experiences.

We’ve looked at so many aspects: ensuring the approach is about empathy and not sympathy, how there is a huge difference between listening and hearing, how meaning and detail can be lost no matter how you communicate, how we can all be made to feel different/foolish/isolated, how tiring it can be to focus on communicating without spoken language, and how it often is all about communication, not being deaf.  We’ve spent hours not talking and communicating in different ways, and also used earplugs at lunchtime to try and experience the world anew, to help us think about what we want a potential audience to feel.

There’s so much still to go, so I’ll blog again as we progress, but in the meantime here are links to two videos which sparked so much conversation.  The first is inspired by Rachel Kolb’s “Seeing at the Speed of Sound”. 

https://vimeo.com/148127830

 

The second is made by our colleagues at On Par Productions, who worked with Jonny to try and get an idea of what it is like for him on a day to day basis. 

https://youtu.be/UgstBdOqGpw

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Comment by Michaela Nutt on January 21, 2016 at 0:00

Thanks for blogging Alan! I am seriously excited about seeing what you've been up to on Tuesday. Those videos are super powerful - chookas for the rest of the week!

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