Announcing Perth Thinking Lab 2024

Hello Australian Deaf Community! My name is Gab Hodge. I'm Deaf from Melbourne and now working in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh in sign language linguistics. 

Have you ever dreamed of spending one week at a beautiful location, thinking, learning and signing with other Deaf people? Yes, me too! 

I’m excited to partner with Deaf Australia in hosting a new event in Perth from 1-5 July 2024. 

Thinking Lab 2024: a space bringing many deaf people together to figure out what and how we think. Our aim is to develop and improve our deep thinking skills. Thinking Lab will not be like sitting in a row in a classroom watching boring lectures. We will watch different films. [Note for Deafblind attendees we can use different prompts on request]. We will draw on different ideas from these films, depending on all of our different interests. These ideas will be taken into group or one-on-one discussions, and we'll also do different creative activities designed to support development of our deep thinking skills. 

Thinking Lab 2024 will be facilitated by myself and four other wonderful Deaf people:

1. Annelies Kusters (Belgium) who is extremely knowledgeable about Deaf people, language, culture and film-making. 
2. Jody Barney (Australia) who has extensive experience relating to First Nations knowledge, culture, language and advocacy. 
3. Stef Linder (Australia) who is skilled with interpreting, translating and community development. 
4. Marta Morgado (Portugal) who is knowledgeable about linguistics, Deaf culture and visual notetaking. This is different to English notetaking, as it relies on transforming ideas into visual or tactile notes. 

We are very excited to host this event together. Jody, Stef and myself all use Auslan. Annelies and Marta use BSL or International Sign. 

There are 25 spots available for Thinking Lab. These limited places ensure we can provide a good quality learning experience for everyone who attends.

The registration fee is $2,000 per person and includes all food, accommodation and learning for the week. We also have five free places available for people who do not have access to funding. 

Would you like to join? You must be:

1. Deaf, Deafblind, Deaf disabled or hard of hearing and age 18 or older
2. Comfortable using visual or tactile sign for the week
3. Open minded, curious and interested in other people and ideas

We hope you will apply! Stef explains the application process in another video. We also have a series of FAQ videos that you might like to check for answers to any questions.  

Hope to see you there! Thank you.

Gab is standing in front of a plain white background. She is wearing a dark red turtleneck and signing in a friendly and informative manner.