CoHearentVision at Thackray Medical Museum for Medicine at the Movies
February 23, 2010
Members of the Leeds Deaf and Hard of Hearing community who are service users of coHearentVision has been taking part in a free film-making course at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds which started in November 2009. Workshops with BSL interpreters introduced the group to the museum highlights, the history of the building and the collections. The students also met the curator and went ‘behind the scenes’ to look at objects in the stores. They are now learning how to create their films, with a variety of themes and styles. 
This came about due to the Government’s Transformation Fund whose aim is to promote adult learning. The Thackray Museum is in partnership with other medical museums around the country:
- British Dental Association
- Old Operating Theatre
- Hunterian Museum (Royal College of Surgeons)
- Edward Jenner Museum
- George Marshall Museum
Each museum is working with a different group of people, who might not typically visit museums. Since the Thackray Museum wanted to build closer links with the deaf and hard of hearing community in Leeds and to find out more about what they want from the museum, Louise Brown, the Project Manager at the Museum, got in touch with Evin Wickremaratne, the Community Liaison Officer, and Sarah Eaton, Sensory Awareness Co-ordinator, at coHearentVision to advertise the course amongst the deaf and hard of hearing community. Louise also attended one of coHearentvision’s Sensory Awareness courses to learn about the communication needs of deaf and hard of hearing people in order to ensure the film-making course are accessible to people with a hearing loss.
The opening night 3rd November 2009, introduced the project and showed a special selection of medical related clips put together by Yorkshire Film Archive to get people inspired. BSL interpreters, booked through coHearentVision’s Sign Language Interpreting Services, have been providing communication support at every class and loop facilities have been purchased by the Museum on advice from coHearentVision, which was loaned to the hard of hearing students during the courses. The extra communication help has enabled the students to take part in the course.
The aim of the course is to open the Thackray Museum to a wider audience, make learning about health and medicine more accessible, and to enable people to tell their story of health and medicine by making a film about whatever inspires them from Thackray. At the end of the course, there will be a Premiere Event when the films will be shown is on Saturday 13th March 2-4pm.and people will be invited to attend. This promise to be quite interested and you are welcome to come and see the films that have been made! 
Excitingly the BBC programme See hear came to film the course on 10th of February. This programme will be shown on the 3rd of March make sure you remember to watch.
This page was created on: and last modified on February 24th, 2010 at 16:10.
