Exploring Deaf heritage futures through critical design and ‘Public Things’

Jamieson, Kirstie; Discepoli, Marta

Abstract

Increasingly, critical design methods offer heritage scholars new ways of exploring identities, experiences and relationships, extending a dialogic approach that supports the testing and realisation of heritage futures. This paper focuses upon a two-year national project that aimed to bring together curators, heritage professionals and Deaf communities to consider Deaf heritage as future-making.

Throughout four collaborative workshops, participants co-designed model museums, designed BSL infrastructures, formulated Deaf heritage professions and prototyped BSL souvenirs. By materialising heritage processes and ‘public things’ participants re-purposed their symbolic power to articulate prevailing inequalities and possible Deaf futures. We discuss the ways in which these playful future-making objects revealed hidden, oppressed, and contradictory heritage relations. We argue that a critical design approach to working with BSL users facilitated the disruption of conventional categories of heritage, Deafness and culture.

Citation

Jamieson, K., & Discepoli, M. (2021). Exploring Deaf heritage futures through critical design and ‘Public Things’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27(2), 117-133. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2020.1771750

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 14, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 31, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Aug 4, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 1, 2021
• Journal: International Journal of Heritage Studies
• Print ISSN: 1352-7258
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-3610
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 117-133
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2020.1771750
• Keywords: Critical Heritage, Deaf Heritage, critical design, participative methods, public Things
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2673552