CREATING A TIKTOK TREND TO REDRESS THE BALANCE OF AUTHENTIC BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE (BSL)
What we loved
Bringing to the Nation’s attention how damaging fake sign language is by tapping into the existing behaviours and motivations of our younger generations
How we got there
We found that 63% of Gen Z rely on TikTok for their learning. Yet when it came to sign language, it was failing the deaf community. For example #deaftok has over half a billion views, but 89% of people fluent in sign language have experienced fake sign on the platform.
Our opportunity was to leverage a dance as a creative means to teach correct BSL.
The lyrics to three trending songs (‘Hotter Now’ by Lu Kala, ‘This Is Me’ by Kullah featuring Jessy Covets and ‘Get A Load of Me’ by Kyla Krush) were translated into BSL by BSL Consultant Cherie Gordon, and turned into dance challenges choreographed by deaf performers Raffie Julien, Chris Fonseca and Sarah Adedeji.
Along with the dances, three tutorials show viewers a step-by-step breakdown of the BSL incorporated into the dance. The films were directed by deaf filmmaker, Sam Arnold and deaf crew all through Sweetshop.
WHAT IT CHANGED
We won over 300k organic views in the first week alone. What’s more we got National news coverage, including The Times covering the story in a half page feature, and BBC Breakfast News featuring an interview with Jamie Clarke, captain of the England Deaf Football Team and Lindsay Foster, executive director or charity Signature.
