What Glastonbury is like for deaf people – one of the festival’s DeafZone coordinators explains

The sense of community is something Deaf people share with how hearing people experience festivals. Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

For the past few years at Glastonbury, sign language interpreters have gone viral on social media for enthusiastically signing songs beside the stage. But those clips tell us nothing about what the overall experience of the festival is like for deaf people. How do deaf people experience and enjoy live music, and how do they create their own alternative space which is not focused around sound?

I am deaf and use British Sign Language (BSL) as my preferred language. As well as my academic job teaching BSL and Deaf studies at York St John University, I am also one of the coordinators of DeafZone. It’s a small charity which organises, among other things, the BSL interpreters of events like Glastonbury.