Deaf Community Lockdown Selfies

Welcome to our website showcasing work produced by the deaf community during the pandemic, reflecting on lockdown and recording experiences of deaf people in pictures.

Cambridgeshire Deaf Association

See the Cambridgeshire gallery

BSL Community, Kent

See the Kent gallery

David Ellington - Actor, Presenter, Producer

See the David Ellington Video

About the project

In December 2020, The Nest Project Community Art CIC began delivering workshops to the deaf community with the aim of recording their experiences of the lockdowns in a visual way. The artists, Rebekah Boone and Claire Gebbett worked with deaf adults, deaf young people, deaf children and with BSL users, cochlear implant users and people who are hard of hearing. In the workshops, participants used a selfie or photo taken during the pandemic as a basis for a mixed media collage which investigated their individual experiences of the lockdowns.

The workshops facilitated much discussion about the positives and negatives of lockdown and allowed for sharing of experiences, troubles and difficulties but also achievements during this unprecedented year. We worked with deaf people from Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon, Peterborough, London, Birmingham, Kent and the East Midlands. We are delighted that so many deaf people joined the project and that work by people from a wide variety of ages and ethnic backgrounds is being shown on this website.