Philip Gerrard: The first Edinburgh Deaf Festival

Photo: Philip with Shona McCarthy, CEO of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Society

This year sees the very first Edinburgh Deaf Festival, part of the family of festivals that take over the city of Edinburgh every August.

The Edinburgh festivals can be an overwhelming experience for anyone, but particularly for deaf people looking for accessible shows and deaf-friendly spaces.

Whilst the Scottish Government wants Scotland to be “the best place for British Sign Language (BSL) users to live, work, learn and visit”, to date the access for deaf people to this major cultural event has been patchy and un-coordinated.

I am a deaf BSL user and have been CEO at Deaf Action in Edinburgh since 2017, and one of the first things that struck me about this amazing city is the vibrancy of the festivals and how much I wanted deaf people, culture and arts to be part of the family.

Deaf Action have been a pioneering force at the forefront of the deaf community for nearly 190 years, so making the festival season accessible with the add-on provision of captions and BSL/English interpreters didn’t feel enough.

We wanted the deaf communities to really be present and integrated into the experience. We have set out to change the face of deaf arts in Edinburgh; both for festival goers to enjoy and for deaf artists to showcase and hone their talents. And so we welcome to the stage, the Edinburgh Deaf Festival.

From 12-19 August 2022 you will find a week of deaf culturally-specific events, deaf spaces, deaf performers and artists, exhibitions and socials – alongside an accessible festival season spanning the whole month.

Deaf culture has a proud place in Scotland in terms of language, history and heritage. As home to Deaf Action, the world’s first deaf organisation, it feels right that Edinburgh should celebrate, promote and raise visibility of deaf culture.

We want deaf visitors to the festival to be able to go to a performance with an interpreter or captioner in the morning, watch a deaf artist in the afternoon, and socialise in our bar in the evening. The best of all worlds.

Hearing festival goers will also find deaf performances in mainstream venues throughout the city, and can be emersed in a whole new world to open their eyes to our fabulous culture.

Deaf people usually have to attend performances at pre-defined, often inaccessible times – such as subtitled cinema screenings at a workday morning. We want to change this by establishing customer-driven access, so have developed an ‘interpreter on request’ service for the festival season.

This means that deaf people can choose the performances they want to see, at the times they want to see them, and request an interpreter for that performance.

This is the vision for the annual Edinburgh Deaf Festival, although this year, we are being cautious with the new venture. We aim to grow this over the next few years, and hope that the interpreting, performance and deaf communities will get behind our vision and help us grow and improve the service.

We expect the impact of Edinburgh Deaf Festival to last far beyond the end of August, when the performers and visitors have returned home.

The number of people who will have seen deaf artists, interpreters and captioners in action will have grown and subliminally they will take this experience with them, maybe influencing their work or social lives.

Deaf young people will have seen deaf adults perform and perhaps inspire them for involvement in the arts as well as strengthening their deaf identity. It will empower all deaf people to take pride in their cultural identity and ownership of their culture, and their stories.

Deaf performers will have had a much-needed opportunity to join the circuit, hone their skills and meet other performers. Festival planners will be more aware of the barriers deaf people face and will make accessibility provisions for their diverse audiences. Many prestigious careers have started or been boosted at the Edinburgh Fringe and other festivals.

Early career interpreters will learn new skills from experienced interpreters that they can adapt and take back to their work in the community. Hopefully a new cohort of multi-skilled interpreters will grow out of the Festival, able to provide for the wide variety of access requirements and platforms that exist here.

Deaf Action are also working with Heriot-Watt University to provide a safe space every day during the Deaf Festival for interpreters to meet with a trained mentor or supervisor in order to debrief, rant, prepare or have a social chat. We want to look after all people who make this festival possible.

I’m grateful to our festival partners who have been taking strides to make their events more accessible to deaf people this year. This feels like a real turning point for deaf festival-goers, where we won’t be an after-thought, but instead brought into the fold.

Being deaf and from a family which has many generations of deafness I’m excited to be able to combine all that is the Edinburgh festivals with a celebration of my own culture and heritage.

And lastly, you may think that a ‘festival’ is not for you. I challenge you to come along to our Deaf Rave, Karaoke, Debate Nights and Socials and find out that the ‘arts’ are much broader than you think!

(Adapted from an article originally published in The Herald)
* For further information visit edinburghdeaffestival.co.uk