BSL Tour of 1880 THAT with Peter Brown

1880: Sign Language in Danger

Join Deaf historian Peter Brown for a tour of the '1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader' exhibition.

The tour will look at the Milan Conference of 1880, which banned sign language, and its far-reaching impact on Deaf communities across the world. It will also describe how a new dawn began in 1960, marked by demands for sign language to be recognised as a language in its own right. This shift helped bring Deaf communities back from the brink of obscurity.

During the tour, you’ll be able to ask questions and share your views. All commentary and conversations will be in BSL, with spoken interpretation and live captioning.

About your guide

Peter Brown was born deaf and attended the Royal School for Deaf Children in Margate in 1967. He has taught BSL and Deaf history at City Lit in London for over 20 years. Peter’s work has featured in the Sign Language Studies journal, the Deaf History Journal and BATOD magazine. He recently hosted an exhibition on the roots of BSL as part of City Lit’s annual Deaf Day.

Need to know

During the tour, you’ll be able to ask questions and share your views. All commentary and conversations will be in BSL, with spoken interpretation and live captioning.

Location

We’ll be in Gallery 2. To get there, go up the stairs or take the lift to level 1.

Place not guaranteed

Booking a ticket for a free, in-person event does not guarantee you a place. You should aim to arrive 15 minutes before the event is scheduled to start to claim your place. If you do not arrive on time, your place may be given to someone on the waiting list.

Waiting list

If this event is fully booked, you may still be able to attend. We will operate a waiting list, which opens 30 minutes before this event starts. Arrive early, and we’ll give you a numbered ticket. If there are any unfilled places just before the start time, we will invite you to enter in order of ticket number.

British Sign Language

This event will be delivered in British Sign Language.

British Sign Language interpreted

This event will have British Sign Language interpretation.

Speech-to-text

This event will be live-transcribed. The captions will be displayed on a screen in-venue.

For more information, please visit our Accessibility page. If you have any queries about accessibility, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Our event terms and conditions

Image credit: BSL Interpreted Tours of 1880 THAT Exhibition, Gallery Photo: Steven Pocock. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).