Diana Terry, a professional artist, tells us about her ambitions to use her art to share the impact of hearing loss (BSL)

Hi everyone, my name is Diana Terry. I am a professional artist with a strong track record of creating work and reaching audiences. I have two masters degrees (Liverpool and Manchester Universities) and I taught art to secondary, tertiary and higher education students.

I eventually had to leave teaching because of my loss of hearing. Since then I have developed a successful freelance art career – in both 3D (sculpture) and 2D (painting).

I became profoundly deaf over a long period of time. I am now completely dependent on implants (a type of hearing aid) to communicate, and I am also learning British Sign Language.

A current focus of my artwork is expressing and communicating my lived experience of hearing loss/deafness. I believe this work communicates the experience of hearing loss in a way which can be rich, expressive and accessible.

My work has recently been accepted by the Wellcome Collection as an example of lived experience of a deafened person. The Wellcome Collection is a museum that ‘aims to challenge how we all think and feel about health.’

I am currently looking to develop collaborations with other artists, with a particular interest in looking in an interdisciplinary way at hearing loss, through a collaboration of art, science and education providers.

I am interested in planning and developing collaborations and partnerships, and I was previously awarded a Project Grant from Arts Council England which supported reaching the deaf community and enabling their access to exhibitions and workshops in four major galleries in North West England.

I have also contributed to research processes as a PPI (Patient & Public Involvement) contributor to research being conducted by the University of Manchester and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) with research lead Dr Rachael Powell.

In Manchester there is also the Manchester Deaf Centre, which houses the British Deaf History Society. I am keen to explore how connections could be fostered across these groups, and in so doing supporting socially responsible and inclusive research, teaching and clinical practice.

I am interested in working with students, academic staff and health professionals, to provide a way of understanding an experience of hearing loss, and providing an alternative method of engaging with the deafened world.

I have developed my own artistic process when creating artwork in which I reflect on my experience and feelings related to tinnitus, ear infections and hearing loss, and then realise these feelings in drawings and other media.

This process results in a very tangible, visual record of my lived experience. I am more than happy to share this process with others. I even carried out outreach work in 2019 at St Andrew’s Primary School in Levenshulme, when I was invited to show the class of hearing aid users the process I had used.

I would love to discover more ways in which I could engage with other individuals in order to develop collaborations and to share lived experiences and my artistic process.

One ambition in particular is to find a residency with other individuals who would be keen to collaborate on this.

If this idea resonates with anyone reading this, I would be grateful if you could get in touch with me via my website below and I look forward to discussing this further.

by Diana Terry

https://www.diana-terry.com/