BSL AT THE BOTANICS

This was a really interesting project to work on at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. As part of the reopen­ing of its his­toric Palm Houses, the garden is unveil­ing a pion­eer­ing project that cre­ates brand new BSL videos for botan­ical terms.

The first of its kind in the UK, the ini­ti­at­ive has been developed in part­ner­ship with BSL experts at Edin­burgh Uni­versity’s Scot­tish Sens­ory Centre in order to enhance engage­ment for deaf vis­it­ors with the garden’s liv­ing col­lec­tion.

It uses a series of videos to demon­strate 13 botan­ical terms – such as tendril, rhodo­den­dron, con­ifer, cac­tus, fern and frond – many of which didn’t exist in BSL.

Short films fea­tur­ing the signs will be access­ible throughout the Palm Houses via QR codes and inter­act­ive pan­els, as part of a mul­ti­me­dia vis­itor exper­i­ence. It is powered by Bloomberg Con­nects, the world’s largest mul­ti­me­dia plat­form for arts and cul­ture.