It’s been so important to us to work with Hear Art, a UK social enterprise, co-founded by Cindy Sasha and Academy Award winner Rachel Shenton, over the last few months.
Today we announced the launch of Shaping Tomorrow, the brand-new, trail-blazing deaf-led video podcast created with a 90% deaf production team to amplify the voices of the deaf community.
The Shaping Tomorrow series embraces British Sign Language and is the very first deaf video podcast to focus on the careers of deaf professionals in the creative, sports and entertainment industries while unearthing the challenges they have faced along the way and how things have changed over time.
The first instalment of the four-episode series is now live on Hear Art’s YouTube channel, and sees designer and entrepreneur Wayne Hemingway MBE have an open and honest conversation with deaf architect Christopher Laing discussing their comparative experiences and journeys through the same industry.
Christopher speaks of the limitations faced by deaf architects and founding the DAF (Deaf Architecture Front) and its support for young people looking to follow in his footsteps:
“When I’m fighting and advocating for people, I’m just imagining a deaf person needing that support from someone that has the knowledge to help them so they can switch off and focus on what they need to do for their education.”
Episode two sees make-up artist Caroline Barnes sit down with deaf make-up artist Nicky Weir, in episode three, deaf mountaineer Michael Woods chats to adventurer and solo expeditionist James Aiken, and episode four sees actress Maxine Peake speak to deaf actress Sophie Stone.
The episodes are to be released exclusively on YouTube every two weeks, while the series will launch on Spotify, Audible and Apple Podcasts at the start of November.
