Free Deaf Awareness Training Sessions for arts and culture professionals
As part of Deaf Awareness Week (5 – 11 May), Stagetext is offering a free training sessions on deaf awareness and deaf access to help raise awareness of text-based deaf access to arts and culture.
The free training (which usually costs £400 + VAT) is taking place on Thursday 8th May, and is being held at Towner Eastbourne in East Sussex, with two available sessions, in the morning or afternoon: 10am to 1pm or 2pm to 5pm.
All our training is designed and delivered by Stagetext staff who have a wide range of lived experience of deafness, including wearing hearing aids, cochlear implants, are hard of hearing or have BSL as their first language. They understand first-hand the impact of accessibility on their enjoyment of arts and culture.
The training will also include a demonstration of a live subtitled tour of Towner Eastbourne and lunch will be provided between 1-2pm.
How to get to the venue: directions can be found here.
We will cover:
- Why deaf awareness is important
- Statistics of deafness in the UK
- Terminology and different types of deafness including D/deaf, deafened and hard of hearing
- Communication strategies for staff speaking to deaf customers and visitors
- Hints and tips on removing communication barriers such as in noisy environments or dimly lit areas
- An understanding of what venues already offer (i.e. hearing loops, transcripts, captions, live subtitled events)
- Introduction to different types of text based deaf access available (theatre captions, live subtitles, digital subtitles) and how they are used
- Easy wins for deaf access
- Best practice for your venue’s customer facing staff for deaf, deafened or hard of hearing audiences or customers
We have worked with an extensive number of organisations within the arts, creative sectors and customer services industries and previous clients include the Mercury Theatre, New Diorama Theatre, Guildhall, RADA, LAMDA, Digital Culture Network, National Theatre, Royal Society, V&A, Regents Park Open Air Theatre and many more within the cultural sector.
The day will be live subtitled and BSL interpreted. If you have any access or dietary requirements please let us know.
To find out more about our training packages, visit our training page.
