Accessibility and Archives: Deaf Perspectives: Past and Present

In this guest blog, Hannah Salisbury, Community and Learning Officer (West) at Suffolk Archives introduces a past deaf life from their collections, and reflects on a recent project that used his images to inspire local children and young people from two Deaf Resource Bases in local schools.

One of my favourite collections at Suffolk Archives has long been the photographs of Walton Burrell (https://suffolkarchives.shorthandstories.com/the-world-of-walton-burrell/index.html). Walton was born in 1863 near Bury St Edmunds and took up photography in the 1880s. We care for about 3,000 of his photos, many of which were taken in West Suffolk during the First World War. They have all come to us in about the last 20 years. About 2,000 are all in one album which was purchased by the Friends of Suffolk Archives.

Walton Burrell with Spot the dog (K997/127/9, courtesy of the Friends of Suffolk Archives)

It was Walton’s wartime photos that I was initially drawn to. They are mostly outdoors and informal, and they are full of people. He photographed hundreds, if not thousands, of servicemen, nurses and civilians who passed through his corner of Suffolk between 1914 and 1918.

Soldiers using a blanket as a trampoline at Ingham camp, c.1915 (K997/67/8, courtesy of the Friends of Suffolk Archives)

It was only after some time that I learned that Walton was profoundly deaf from birth, and it put his photographs of all these people in a new light. He must have been very skilled at building rapport with people, many of whom he would surely have met only briefly, to organise them for his, sometimes elaborate, compositions.

Next I learned that Walton had also travelled all over the world. There cannot have been many people in Bury St Edmunds in the 1930s who had been to Guatemala and Japan, Hawaii and Australia.

An older Walton on board a ship in Hawaii, 1936 (K1349)

The more I learned about Walton the more I wanted to share his story and his photographs more widely. This led to a conversation with Stuart Bruce, Senior Creative Producer at Orchestras Live, about whether we could use Walton’s story as the basis for a music and photography project with local deaf children and young people. What evolved from that conversation became the Deaf Perspectives project.

We are lucky in Bury St Edmunds to have two schools with Deaf Resource Bases – Westgate Community Primary School and King Edward VI School. Together they support students with hearing loss from Reception through to Year 11. They enthusiastically joined the project and helped to develop the funding bids we submitted to Arts Council England and others.

Pupils visiting Suffolk Archives in Bury St Edmunds as part of the project development in April 2023

Stuart set about organising the creative team, and composer James Montgomery and flautist Ruth Montgomery joined us. Ruth is deaf herself, and she and James have worked together previously. Britten Sinfonia joined us as the orchestral partner, Suffolk Music Education Hub offered generous support, and the Offshoot Foundation came on board to deliver the photography and film parts of the project.

Together we developed a plan, sent off our funding bids, and crossed our fingers. A few weeks later we started to hear back from one funder and a time and in total raised just under £40,000 to fund the project.

The project delivery took place mostly between September and December 2023, with activities taking place nearly every week that term, including:

·       Archive sessions to learn about Walton and his photos

·       An Instrument Zoo – an opportunity to try out different musical instruments

·       A session with contemporary deaf photographer Stephen Iliffe

·       Photography workshops with the Offshoot Foundation

·       A trip to the Great War Huts

·       5 music workshops to create new pieces of music inspired by Walton’s photographs

·       A concert, which saw the students perform these new pieces alongside Britten Sinfonia

The concert was filmed by the Offshoot Foundation and is a marvellous record of the evening.

We have also developed an online display about Walton, learning resources, and an escape room game for schools.

Pupils at the Great War Huts, each dressed in a uniform from one of Walton’s pictures

Enjoying a music workshop

The concert – Britten Sinfonia on the left, Deaf Perspectives pupils on the right, Walton’s photographs being projected behind them

Pupils of the Westgate Community Primary School Deaf Resource Base (DRB), composed and photographed by a pupil from King Edward VI School DRB

The project has also been an opportunity for us to undertake further research on Walton, which included the discovery that he was among the very earliest members of the British Deaf Association. Stephen Iliffe and Jemima Buoy have been generous with their time in helping with this research. At the moment, we think Walton may have been the earliest deaf photographer working in the UK, and the project has helped to raise his profile not only locally but with the wider deaf community.

As we had hoped, the students have enjoyed the project enormously and it has helped to increase their confidence. Meeting and working with deaf role models has been hugely important, and relationships within the group have been strengthened. Feedback from the students has included:

·       The music felt like it brought Walton’s pictures to life.

·       It felt amazing, I was shocked about how it turned out.

·       It has shown that we are unstoppable at creating music.

·       I loved playing with the orchestra, it was so fun. I now love playing music.

·       The concert was AMAZING. I became more confident.

·       I love Ruth because she [plays] an instrument and she is deaf.

·       I was happy seeing all my family at the concert.

Several students have carried on with music and photography as a result of the project and school staff are keen to undertake similar creative projects in the future.

From the point of view of Suffolk Archives, not only have we added to our knowledge of a significant collection, we have had a great time working with fantastic people and organisations in our local community. As one of the concert audience members observed, ‘Archives not only conserve the past but make things happen in the present too’.

You can find out more about the project here: https://www.suffolkarchives.co.uk/be-inspired/communityprojects/deaf-perspectives/

 You can also listen to one of our Outside the Box podcasts about this project here.

Guest blogs are welcome.  Please email diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk.  We would also like to hear from you if you have found one of the Allies’ blogs helpful to your work.