This year’s Captioning Awareness Week (11th – 17th November, 2024) marked Stagetext’s 24th anniversary in bringing deaf access to arts and culture. This year we highlighted the 18 million deaf, deafened or hard of hearing adults in the UK.
Over 10 days the Stagetext team pulled out all the stops in celebrating deaf access to arts and culture across the UK. The response has been overwhelmingly positive – seeing so many venues and professionals eager to make their events welcoming for the 18 million deaf, deafened and hard of hearing adults in the UK has been heartening.
During the week Stagetext:
- Held a Deaf Awareness Training Day at the historic Gorleston Pavilion in Norfolk for arts and culture professionals across the South East. Chief Executive Alex Youngs gave us a very warm welcome and hosted a live subtitled tour of this gorgeous building. Feedback on the tour from the attendees included: “So impressive, and yet so easy. So easy for the tour guide so easy for the attendees…. and a low barrier to manoeuvre over and around and incorporate into day-to-day work”.
- Celebrated Stagetext’s 24th birthday celebration at Graeae in London with our ambassadors, board members and one of our co-founders.
- Hosted a webinar, Whose Line is It Anyway? exploring how to create the best viewing experience for all audiences, including deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people.
- Worked in collaboration with Channel 4, providing live subtitles for the studio audience during ‘The Last Leg’ broadcast. One audience member said “It was genuinely the most accessible event I’ve ever been to. You’ve done something really wonderful and I really appreciate it.”
Live subtitles by Stagetext at The Last Leg - Connected with a lip-reading class in Sheringham, Norfolk as part of our outreach project to raise awareness of deaf access to arts and culture across the country.
- Finally, we made several appearances at captioned theatre performances and live subtitled tours at museums throughout the weeks leading up to and during Captioning Awareness Week, including at the Trafalgar Theatre for The Duchess [of Malfi], National Theatre for The Other Place, Gielgud Theatre for Juno and the Paycock, British Library for A Silk Road Oasis tour and not forgetting the tour at Gorleston Pavilion.
We’d like to send a huge thanks to all the arts and cultural venues who captioned and live subtitled their events, shared our posts, and helped spread the word about accessible arts across the UK. Together, we’re making arts and culture a space where everyone feels welcome,
