How many people do you think sign BSL? It should be such a simple question. We should have a clear, factual answer. But we don’t.
There’s supposed to be an official figure that everyone can rely on. What figure is that?
It comes from the Census. They happen every 10 years: the last one was in 2011. But when it comes to BSL, it seems that a lot of people didn’t get counted at all in 2011. Oh, their information was in the Census records – but the fact that BSL is their language was hidden. The most visual, visible language in the whole country – quite possibly your language – was left unnoticed, unreported, unrecorded. Invisible.

Motivated by Heriot-Watt University in March 2021 Deaf Explorer joined the online deaf community to make a difference to the census figures and delivered a social media campaign counting down the days with imaginative and playful ways to deliver public information targeting the Deaf community.

With that spirit of imagination, and debate about how Deaf people gain full participation in society Heriot-Watt University and Deaf Explorer have produced a BSL festival called, “Seeing Signing Living”. It will be part of Deaf Explorer’s “Square Eye Festival”.

To make BSL visible, we have commissioned Deaf artists who use sign language to premiere new work over the 24 and 25 April 2021.

Together we will celebrate the richness of the language and discuss better empowerment of signers. All in all, we aim to inspire the BSL population to make the Census work for the community!

It’s small project hoping to make a big impact amongst the Deaf community. It is funded by Arts Council England Culture Recovery Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation.

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