This is Rinkoo Barpaga, Rinkoo attended the Erdington Social Media Surgery this afternoon for some help telling the story of a project he’s involved with.
In 2 weeks time he’ll be flying to the states to take part in a series of workshops and training sessions with deaf community groups, theatre groups and comedians to learn how they approach putting on events for the deaf community over there hoping to bring the knowledge back to the UK to make things happen over here.
Not photographed is Rinkoo’s interpreter (who politely declined to be in front of the camera) a volunteer who had come along to act as a sign interpreter so that Rinkoo could sit and learn with me as Rinkoo himself is deaf.
It was a productive session which as always was adapted to best suit the person learning but in this instance involved a 3 way conversation and a lot of pointing but there was something really lovely about how it came together, a volunteer helping a volunteer come and learn from, had it been someone else other than me teaching him, another volunteer.