Barcamp Manchester 2 & Contact Theatre

So this weekend I attended Barcamp Manchester 2, which was held at Contact Theatre Manchester.

The event was fantastic, as ever and I once again delivered my talk “An introduction to BSL”,  however due to the scale of the event, it clashed with some other great talks and throughout the rest of the day people kept saying “I really wanted to come to your session but it clashed with something else”.

The talk took a very similar format to the one delivered at Barcamp Blackpool and even had a couple of the same audience members, however this time with the addition of a few more words than before and a lot more confidence from me. Despite a hiccup with the projector!

The main thing that I took away from this Barcamp though was actually to do with the venue.

Contact Manchester is a fantastic space for people from the community to come together, with workshops from performing arts and dance to beatboxing and break dancing. I noticed around the venue, posters for signed performances, and I got the chance to talk briefly with the director who told me that they were trying to get more performances signed at the theatre.

Signed theatre is something I am yet to experience and I hope that I will be able to attend one of the shows Contact will be putting on over the coming months. I think it is very important that theatre is made as accessible as possible and signed showings go a long way towards encouraging that.

The next signed performance at Contact will be Blackberry Trout Face by Laurence Wilson on Thursday 26th November. Check out this link for more information.

I’m hoping I will be able to attend and it would be great if others, whether you are learning BSL or not could go too.  Not only to raise the profile of signed performances but also of this fantastic venue and their staff who made Barcamp Manchester 2 another brilliant event!

Lally.

Tags: #bcman2, Barcamp, bsl, Contact, Manchester, Theatre