Deaf children in Birmingham awarded over £40,000 to study heritage thanks to lottery help

Deaf children in Birmingham will find out about their heritage in a new project which has just received £40,600 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The project, which is being run by BID Services with Deaf People in Birmingham, will investigate for the first time the development of the deaf community in the early half of the 20th century.  It will concentrate on the difficulties deaf people faced in finding jobs, and look at why deaf people were socially excluded.

Both mainstream and deaf schools in the Birmingham area will be involved, using reminiscences and archive research to produce a DVD and an exhibition to illustrate the experiences of deaf people from the 1920s to the 1940s.  To date, there has been no research into the lives of deaf people who were in the Midlands at that time.

Anne Jenkins, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in the West Midlands, said: “This is exactly the sort of project we love giving a grant to.  It will capture people’s memories and experiences and help others to understand the story of deaf people in Birmingham. We see it as a catalyst for a new understanding between the deaf and hearing communities.”

A programme of workshops and other activities will be based at the new Deaf Cultural Centre in Birmingham.

BID has been finding that many deaf children feel isolated in the community because they are attending mainstream schools.

“They often don’t understand or even know about their heritage and identity,” says Terry Yarnall, Area Development Officer of BID.  “We want deaf children to find out about their history, and the schools are supporting us in this.  This grant will allow us to add a few pages to the story of deaf people in the Midlands. ”