Fieldwork Complete! (Presumably)

1880 That

                August 3, 2025

            Fieldwork Complete! (Presumably)

            I believe I completed my fieldwork on July 29, 2025. I did a focus group at the Wellcome Collection with two participants, and while our time together was very short, I selected the most critical questions and was able to collect a fair bit of data.
Of course I can’t show photos of the focus group itself, so here are a few from the museum instead.
How incredible to have two deaf-led exhibitions on show in a major museum at the same time.

In the permanent exhibition, “Being Human,” every object had BSL, transcripts, captions, audio description, and so on. And yet this exhibition that highlighted and served disabled people so well, only focused on deaf people through their assistive technology. This earmold, and a pair of glasses with attached hearing aid, were the only mentions of deaf people in the exhibition.

1880 That was really excellent - this piece, ATTENTION, was my favorite. The Wellcome Collection created BSL labels first before translating them into English. The BSL label for ATTENTION is here; you can compare it to the English version here.

Finger Talk was a video installation with Woojer haptic vests to convey the audioscape. The video was primarily Visual Vernacular rather than a specific sign language.

After the tour, we ended up having the focus group in the Wellcome Collection Library. The librarian was adamant that it was a quiet space, but accepted that we could use it since we were only going to be signing. She seemed surprised by the idea that one could have a conversation in a library without disturbing others, and when we left she said we did a good job staying quiet. 😂
Now, I say I “believe” I completed my fieldwork because I thought I had in January 2024, but here I was in July 2025 doing more! As noted in my conversation with my supervisors, though, I seem to be getting very close to writing it up.
I’m actually getting close, maybe!

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