Exhibition: Stories and Perspectives from the Deaf Community in Slovakia (DeafStudio)
For the Deaf Museums project, DeafStudio produced an archive of Deaf Magazines as well as a physical exhibition that showcases some of the stories from these magazines.
Online Archive of Gong Magazine
At the start of the project, DeafStudio found a large number of magazines from the Slovakian Gong magazine for the Deaf in one of their offices. Gong is the monthly magazine for deaf and hard of hearing persons in Slovakia. The team decided to use these magazines for their exhibition. They had almost all issues of Gong from 1983 to 2006.
Their first priority: to make these magazines accessible to everyone, both deaf and hearing. The articles in the magazines gives researchers a valuable source of information about developments in the Deaf community in those years. For Deaf and hard of hearing persons, the magazines are a valuable resource, as well. They can teach younger persons about the past of the Deaf community, they can remind older persons of all that has changed since 1983.
Scanning that many magazines by hand was not possible; it was too much work. Fortunately, the university offered a solution: magazines could be scanned automatically, for a reasonable price. The scanned magazines were then converted into 'flipping magazines' that can be read online. You can find the archive here: https://archiv.spj.sk/archiv-gong/
Physical Exhibition: Stories and Perspectives from the Deaf Community
Several stories were selected from the Gong magazine and converted into six printed posters.
A pilot exhibition was organized on 16 December 2022 at the offices of DeafStudio in Prešov. About 40 persons came to the exhibition. DeafStudioprovided the visitors with tablets that they could use to complete an online evaluation form. This allowed the organizers to quickly and easily gather responses from visitors as they moved through the exhibition.
19 persons completed the online evaluation form. 100% of the respondents said that they liked the exhibition and found its content interesting. Some suggestions were made for improvements, for instance less text, more photos and videos. Many asked for more posters, about more topics.
25 January 2023, a second exhibition was organized, now at the School for the Deaf in Prešov.