More Fieldwork!
I didn’t expect I’d be using this newsletter much more; it was created to share my fieldwork journey in 2023 and I haven’t been doing that lately. I’ve shared one or two other things, but now I get to take the newsletter back to basics: I’m doing more fieldwork!
The last week of July, I’ll be in London to conduct a focus group at the Wellcome Collection. My goal is to include a deaf group visiting a deaf exhibition, in this case 1880 THAT by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader. My focus group sites have included museums that weren’t doing anything for deaf people and museums that were striving to make their exhibitions accessible to deaf people, but this is the first time I’m looking at an exhibition by deaf people. I want to find out if responses change when deaf visitors see themselves in museum content, not just in accessibility accommodations.
I did run a prior focus group at the Smithsonian American Art Museum while Musical Thinking was running, and there were a few Christine Sun Kim pieces in that exhibition - but the Wellcome Collection has 1880 THAT, Finger Talk, and deaf-focused programming, and is a museum that does more for deaf-friendliness than most others I’ve seen.
At least I think - I haven’t been there yet! I’ll also be meeting my supervisors for the first time, which I’m very excited for. We’ve had countless Zoom meetings in the past five years, but we’ve never met in person.
After the week in London, I’ll be heading to Ghent for a week to attend the Deaf History International conference. I wasn’t expecting to go this year, but I was asked to join a panel about museums, and my new business is paying for this part of the trip. (Most of you have probably heard about the new business, but for those who haven’t, I left the National Deaf Life Museum at the end of 2024 and started Echo Spark Consulting.)
That’s my update - but stay tuned for more as I head to London!