Rachel Drummond-Hay hails an incredible year for BSL and deaf-led productions
This year, the BBC is set to launch the drama Reunion (written by deaf Bristolian Billy Mager), ITV’s crime thriller Code of Silence stars deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis, and Retreat, a forthcoming BFI-funded thriller, is written and directed by Ted Evans, who is deaf, and features a deaf-led cast.
Then there’s the growing trend of deaf contributors on many of our most popular factual entertainment shows, with 2025 already seeing Imy as a contestant on The Great Pottery Throw Down and Sarah and Jon on Stacey Solomon’s Sort Your Life Out.
Lesser known is the work of LumoTV (formerly BSLBT, the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust), which commissions programmes across all genres that highlight the deaf and sign language communities. Established in 2008 to offer commercial broadcasters an alternative way to provide sign language output, it is proud to be the only sign language-based commissioning body in the world. Currently, its programmes run on Channel 4, Sky and Together TV, and stream on LumoTV’s website.
Commissions from LumoTV have strict criteria, not only to make engaging programmes that stand up against any other shows on their partner channels, but also to use the UK’s leading deaf talent behind the camera as key creatives.
It also prioritises training and development to maintain a future pipeline of deaf talent – with the goal that this talent pool can work across both deaf/BSL content and mainstream programmes.
Series one of Sign2Win, the world’s first gameshow in British Sign Language, was commissioned in 2021, with the fourth series due to air later this year. It has deaf culture and talent at its core – from the language (deaf or not, all contestants have to play in BSL) and the games that are played to the team that makes it.
It is a genuinely mixed deaf/hearing collaboration, with deaf talent at all levels, from the studio director and editor to runners and trainees. Not only has it proved hugely popular with a deaf audience, it has also been acquired by Challenge – home to many of TV’s best gameshows.
Bristol has a legacy of nurturing deaf talent, on screen and off. See Hear, the BBC’s flagship deaf magazine series, was made in Bristol for more than 40 years, and in 1978 the Centre for Deaf Studies was established at the University of Bristol.
As the first higher education institute in Europe, it concentrated solely on research and education that aimed to benefit the deaf community, making Bristol a hub for deaf talent across all genres. More than 100 LumoTV/ BSLBT programmes have been made in Bristol over the past six years.
In spite of all the positives, it’s not all rosy for Bristol and the West of England. The Centre for Deaf Studies is long gone, and last year the See Hear tender was won by Signpost Entertainment, meaning that the base (and a lot of deaf talent) has moved to the North East.
But the growth of deaf talent shouldn’t just be looked at through a regional lens. While we should celebrate the increasingly visibility of deaf individuals on our TV screens, and more and more deaf crew in production, we have to maintain momentum. This requires long-term investment in work-based training opportunities, especially for the profoundly deaf, as well as bolder casting decisions to include more deaf people, using BSL on screen.
We must tap into the huge creative potential of deaf talent for all productions. Adjustments for working with deaf people are simple if the attitude and will exists from production companies and commissioners.
And integrating deaf talent into a team, like working with any other diverse group, only enhances the quality of any production.
Rachel Drummond-Hay is Chair of RTS West of England and Managing Director of Drummer Television
