The Science Museum Group launch their new project, “Signing Science”

John Wilson is working with the Science Museum Group (SMG) on a new project called “Signing Science”. He will be looking at British Sign Language provision for Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences in the SMG, leading to recommendations for future action.

All of the museums, exhibitions and events are being reviewed across the UK, including digital information. I spoke to John to find out more.

Hi John, can you tell us a little bit more about you? What sort of fields do you work in?

I’m John Wilson, I’m profoundly deaf and a BSL user. I’ve always been interested in what people broadly call culture – history and all the different kinds of arts and the places you go to find about them, the museums and the galleries. When I was younger my main focus was on Deaf history. I was working backstage in the British Museum and it was there that I began my mission to make culture and Deaf history accessible to the Deaf community.

I do so through the medium of BSL, both by opening up mainstream culture to Deaf audiences by promoting Deaf Arts and also by creating opportunities for deaf people to work in galleries and museums. One example of this is the training for Deaf guides which I worked on in partnership with Tate Modern. This has remained the main theme of my professional and voluntary work.

More recently I have particularly enjoyed leading groups of deaf people, using BSL, on tours and talks in some of the best-known museums and galleries in the world to introduce them to the collection or to special exhibitions. I have done this in most of the world-leading galleries and museums in London and elsewhere – including the Science Museum.

I am always conscious that access to museums for Deaf people has been on an ad-hoc basis, exhibition by exhibition and project by project, with nothing on a long-term basis. This has been made worse by the pandemic as several projects which were running before 2020 were obviously put on hold and show no signs of getting up and running again.

I can say that I now have a lot of experience of the barriers that put deaf people off from making the most of what organisations are offering and how to tackle those barriers. So when the Science Museum Group announced that they wanted to tackle them too I jumped at the chance to work with them.

The Science Museum Group are, after all, the world’s leading museum for the history of science, technology, industry and medicine with the Science Museum in London, the National Railway Museum in York and Locomotion: the National Railway Museum in Shildon. There is also the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, as well as the collections stored away in Olympia and Wiltshire.

Where did this initiative come from – to look at BSL provision and accessibility?

The Science Museum Group have recently created two new roles which have a focus on Access, Inclusion and Diversity; one responsible for their public facing offer and the other internal workforce. Part of their role is to share best practice and have a more consistent approach to accessibility across the museum sites.

There is already a commitment to include British Sign Language in major new gallery developments and there are some Deaf-led or interpreted events but rather than review these on a project by project basis they saw the need to step back and look at the wider picture in consultation with d/Deaf people. The outcomes from the project have not been set – it is really the start of a conversation which we hope will pave the way to more partnerships and projects focused on making Science Museum Group a more welcoming place for BSL users.

How were you approached for your involvement in this project, and what responsibilities will you have throughout?

I was not approached for this project as such. Rather, the Science Museum Group kicked off a procurement process, inviting interested people to submit a tender to do the work. Fortunately for me, when all the criteria were applied and the submissions assessed my application was successful.

I have now begun to work closely with staff at the Science Museum to take the project forward. We will be working with the different museums in the group, looking at how they engage with the Deaf communities in their part of the country, working on actions to improve that engagement. The focus will be on using BSL as the main form of communication.

This then opens up the challenge of how to use BSL to communicate awareness and information about scientific subjects – the so called STEM subjects, which are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

How long will the project take to review all museums, exhibitions and events?

The project will last for a year. The first phase includes site visits and meetings with staff at each Museum. Alongside this we will hold discussions with an Advisory group made up of BSL users with links to STEM or the Museum sector.

There are some gallery developments in the pipeline and whilst we won’t be able to review, in detail, specific projects the recommendations we come up with will inform and influence this work.

Will you be working with any other BSL consultants?

I am the only BSL consultant that the Science Museum Group will be working with on this particular project but we will be involving lots of Deaf people. I have already recruited a group of ten deaf people with an interest in different aspects of the project to act as our advisory group. We will also involve local communities, through Deaf clubs and the like, when exploring and developing different ideas for the different museums.

As it currently stands, how accessible do you feel the STEM subjects are for BSL using pupils?

This is a difficult question to answer at the moment – this will be part of our research of the background to this whole subject. But I think it is important to say that the main point of this project is to make the work of the museums in the Science Museum Group more accessible and relevant to Deaf communities.

We are not trying to improve STEM education in schools and colleges but we are focusing at the contribution which the group can make by using BSL to make its vast stores of information accessible to pupils and students – encouraging deaf young people to get involved in STEM subjects and making sure that the language they use to talk about them is consistent and relevant and not confusing.

How do you personally feel about BSL provision in Science – is this something you would have personally found useful when studying?

Science was not one of my strongest subjects at school. I did not show any aptitude for physics or chemistry but I did love biology and continued studying and taking exams in that subject at college, after I left school. However, two of my classmates went on to gain doctorates as PhDs in Astrophysics after leaving school.

I have, however, always been fascinated by achievements in science such as the moon landings which I followed closely. What I really wanted to do was bring Deaf History out of obscurity and part of this for me was the unsung achievements of Deaf scientists.

I worked with the National Maritime Museum to devise a play about John Goodricke, the Deaf amateur astronomer who is best known for his observations of the variable star Algol in 1782. I was adamant that he should be played by a Deaf actor and we recruited a Deaf actor to play him at the National Maritime Museum.

When the play transferred to the Science Museum I took on the role myself, with an interpreter providing a voice-over for hearing members of the audience. The play was very well received and was revived by other Deaf actors later on. It also won an award for Best Access project from the Gulbenkian Foundation.

I have gone into a bit of detail about this project because it seems to me that it is the kind of approach which could be replicated in other places which really engages Deaf visitors and BSL users. Of course we are also really interested in the fantastic Deaf-led collaboration in the Scottish Sensory Centre to devise, agree and disseminate new BSL signs in STEM subjects and the Signing Science project is a great opportunity to think about how to get involved in that.

We want to be open to new ideas and best practice wherever we find it and particularly ideas put forward and developed with Deaf people.

My role is to bring people together and help them develop ideas and then turn those into recommendations for the Science Museum Group.

Image of John Wilson in costume as John Goodricke, the deaf amateur astronomer.

The Limping Chicken will be following the result of this research with keen interest and will report back once the project is complete.