Kinetic Connectivity: Deaf Street Dance in Lockdown

Lockdown for Deaf young people is more challenging than for hearing young people. The majority of Deaf young people are born to hearing families forced to follow an ‘oral’ method of education, reliant on speech and lipreading.

Social distancing for Deaf young people has been double isolation: they often cannot communicate with their own parents and siblings at home, they often travel long distances in taxis to attend specialist educational provision, which results in isolation from their neighbourhood peers.

During this time of social distancing, they have lost both their education and social opportunities. Literacy levels are traditionally behind hearing peers of the same age so written information inaccessible.

Commission by Creative Black Country

Thanks to my new commission by Creative Black Country, I have been able to publish a series of 16 fully accessible dance video tutorials aimed specifically towards Deaf children who's first language is British Sign Language.

The series ran throughout the summer of 2020, providing a variety of tutorials in different street dance styles - from tutting, waving, hip hop, and footwork, and featured guest teacher Ariel Fung, a professional Deaf dancer from Hong Kong.

All videos come with captions, voiceover and and taught by myself and guest teacher Ariel in BSL, making them fully accessible to all.

You can watch the complete video tutorial series on my YouTube channel