The Project

‘PERIEGESIS’ (beautiful multi-meaning Greek/Latin word almost synonym to perambulation/ tour/ sightseeing/ voyage) is aiming to promote inclusiveness of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) people in vaults of cultural treasures; mainly museums, galleries, and similar cultural spaces. ‘PERIEGESIS’, is aiming for an inclusion of the sometimes marginalized group of DHH, by elevating the skills of hearing museum/and or gallery staff such as Docents, Public relations Officers, Museum Shop Managers, Museum Protection Staff, Tour guides and the like, to be able to communicate with DHH. In a post-COVID19 era all people will long for live human contact. All of us in EU have felt the isolation via the lockdowns and the cut from other human beings. This is the isolation some of our fellows feel as DHH in the society for all of their lives. PERIEGESIS is aiming to help adults who already are or intending to work in cultural vaults to communicate via visual language with a very large percentage of humanity which includes DHH people. This will not only benefit DHH but also the upskilling of adult workers or adults who want to develop further skills thus having better chances of finding a work. PERIEGESIS is also aiming to bring closer these cultural places to DHH. If museums are to be made attractive to a special target group, this means creating new groups of visitors, and thereby generating more income and more publicity. It is widely accepted that language (in any form -visual or oral) is one of the most important instruments to communicate ideas and feelings.

Museums (and galleries) have been active in shaping knowledge for over six hundred years, thus their function within today’s society is crucial and important (Greenhill, 1992). In addition, beyond shaping knowledge, museums and galleries have a multidimensional role of offering an inclusive experience of simultaneously learning and entertaining; important both for the individual person as well as to the global community (Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. 2018). Accordingly, ‘PERIEGESIS’ aspires to target hearing employee staff who are directly communicating with visitors, in an attempt to make them get familiarized with visual language/s. Sign language should be considered as important (visual) and discrete language as the other (spoken) languages. Side-lining the visual language means automatically putting aside more than 466 million people and their opportunity to broaden their perspectives, knowledge, experience and leisure acquired through visiting museums and/or galleries and other cultural spaces.

Through its well-defined structure; detailed analysis of management; analysis and development of intelligent outputs; bringing together projects partners from different backgrounds and its associated partners; “PERIEGESIS” aspires to benefit people from various target groups, such as:

• adults/Individuals who are willing to be trained on the project methodology, will have acquired free access to all the material produced, benefiting mostly from O1 ‘PERIEGESIS Compendium’ and 03 ‘Video Learning Directory for Museum staff’;
• adult coaches, trainers, educators and sign language specialists who will be endowed with innovative material to be used towards inclusion of DHH in cultural monuments, by developing the skills of the people working in them. This is achieved mostly through the O4 ‘Lesson Plans for DHH inclusion in museums’ and the O5 ‘Digital Serious game’, which offers and interactive, fun activity to learn; most suitable for the digital/ covid era.

PERIEGESIS partnership was established by trying to accomplish a balance of consortium in having organisations who have much experience in strategic partnership projects, whilst also having partners who have expertise in the field of innovative digital tools and of course partnership with expertise in the Deaf Society. The consortium consists of five partner organizations deriving five European countries (Poland, Cyprus, Greece, France (coordinator), and Italy), which cover a wide range of expertise and experiences related to the scope and the aims of ‘PERIEGESIS’, whilst they have a Pan-European outreach in their activities. Specifically, the consortium of partners consists of a balance of organizations with experience in managing, providing administrative support, as a connecting link between authorities, promote educational work, support and consult adult development skills. Critical support to the consortium, in the implementation, dissemination and exploitation of the project will be also provided by the extended network of organizations working with the partners coming from a wide range of social, cultural, professional and regional background.