Photography student creates poster campaign for Deaf Awareness Week

Photography student creates poster campaign for Deaf Awareness Week

Karolina Michalik, a photography student at City College Norwich, has used her camera and editing skills to produce a series of thought-provoking posters that will be exhibited in the college during Deaf Awareness Week (6th – 12th May, 2019).

Twenty-year-old Karolina, from Watton, has titled the series ‘1 in 6’, because that is the proportion of people in the UK who have a hearing impairment.  Karolina’s posters aim to make people think about deafness, whilst providing practical tips for communicating with deaf people.

The project grew out of a piece of work Karolina did for her college course, the UAL Extended Diploma in Photography.  Karolina, who is deaf herself, carried out research with a mix of both hearing and deaf people to inform her campaign messages.

While the deaf people Karolina spoke to expressed lots of positives in relation to their identity and lives, her research also found that there can be barriers between deaf and hearing people.  These can arise because hearing people are unsure of how to interact with deaf people and because of a lack of basic knowledge of British Sign Language (BSL) signs.

Karolina’s poster exhibition will be on show in City College Norwich’s main reception and library during Deaf Awareness Week.

Speaking about the impact she hopes her posters will have, Karolina Michalik said:

“I want to promote deaf awareness and show people the basic ways they can communicate with deaf people, because lots of people aren’t deaf aware and they find it difficult to communicate.  I thought if I look at the basic rules, and put them into a campaign, and advertise this in an exhibition, then hopefully people will use the information and try to communicate more.”