Music & The Deaf – ‘Dreams’ project

Over the course of 2017’s year of activity verd de gris will be exploring the notion of ‘sound’ and ‘communication’ with local people who are deaf or severely hard of hearing.

Over the last few years we have been working closely people in the Pakistani community who have been deaf since birth.

Our good friend Sabah was born in Pakistan but came to the UK as a girl around 7/8 years old. She has showed to show few opportunities there are for her within her own community (in relationships, marriage, employment etc.) but she is supported by an amazing family and has worked with us on a number of our creative projects.

Getting to know Sabah and her family and the cultural factors that constrain her, we believe there is a way to use her creativity to help her find a way to ‘express’ herself and ‘voice’ concerns that matter to her and her community. And for us there may be a way to understand more about deaf people’s ‘internal connection’ to music / dance / the voice.

An exciting part of this project will be the chance for us to work with local organisation Music & the Deaf and musician and performer Amy Rose Atkinson, who is herself has loss of hearing. We also hope to bring in award-winning sound artist and composer Nina Perry on the project.

We also see possibilities for an intergenerational element  – if we can work closely with someone like Sabah (where conventional language barriers are less of an issue) we may find new ways to work and reach people who are hard of hearing – an important issue for us in our work with older people who are losing their hearing and are becoming more socially isolated as a result.

Sabah performing with us at our celebration event at Halifax Academy in Jan ’17.