Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our leader today is Mary McDevitt, the leader of the Edinburgh signing choir. She is accompanied by Louise Holden, who will be signing.
Presiding Officer, members of Parliament, thank you for your invitation to address you today. It is an honour to be here to reflect on the work of the Edinburgh signing choir.
Some of you may be unaware that there actually exists a world within a world. There is the deaf world and the hearing world. Working as a British Sign Language interpreter, I am often a bridge between those two worlds. The choir also acts as a bridge, connecting the wonderful world of language through music with the beautiful world of language through sign.
For many, the concept of a deaf choir seems strange and they wonder how deaf people can “sing”. I am often asked how it is done, so let me explain. We have around a dozen deaf choir members and we get together and discuss the lyrics of the music, delving into the meaning of the words and deciding on the sign vocabulary best suited. The movement of the sign is then matched to the tone and mood of the music.
For example, a well-known piece that we often perform is “How Great Thou Art”. We looked at the word “great” in English, discussed its meaning, then chose the sign that I am showing you. The sign also indicates “amazing”, “awesome”, and “wonderful” in English. Therefore a deaf audience seeing the sign would get far more meaning from it than a hearing audience would by simply hearing the word “great”. The choir compensates for that by doing what I have just done with you today and explaining the meaning of some signs ahead of time, so that the audience can look out for them. In that way, everyone, whether deaf or hearing, can share the experience.
People have often commented that it has been very emotional to experience music not only with their ears but with their eyes, too; a bombardment of those senses gives them a fresh understanding of often familiar pieces of music.
We have been invited to many places, and I will name a few. We performed on stage with a hearing choir at the Paralympic Flame festival at Meadowbank, and we performed at the Glasgow Royal concert hall, where 2,500 audience members joined in after we taught them a short piece. There was also HM Prison Cornton Vale, where we were humbled to see some women wipe away tears from their eyes. Those are unforgettable experiences of bridges built. Perhaps one day we will be invited here—you never know—but addressing you today has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege. Thank you.
Members will be pleased to know that that brazen attempt to elicit an invitation has been successful and I have invited the choir to join us at the Christmas carol concert in December. [Applause.]