Signkid and the power of sign language songs
For Sign Language Week 2025, I’m releasing a new artwork in collaboration with Signkid - one of the world-leading deaf composers of sign language songs.
This is part of my evolving photographic practice to capture British Sign Language (BSL) in all its grace and fluidity, power and expressiveness.
Signkid performs to big audiences at major festivals and had a documentary about his work on BBC Radio 1. His celebrity stretches to the New York City where a giant mural portrait looks over a Brooklyn street. Signkid appeared in Netflix’s recent Deaf Rave film. He’s also a global ambassador for the Champion fashion brand.
Many of Signkid’s early family memories revolve around music. “At home, I’d watch my brother imitate Michael Jackson dance moves on TV,” he says. “If couldn’t quite make out the lyrics, I could follow the beat via my brother’s movements.”
“By 2012, when I was at college doing media studies, I had a go at making my own beats, inspired by hip-hop and R&B greats like Tupac and Kanye West. I’m profoundly deaf in my right ear but I can pick up a little sound from my left ear. You don’t necessarily need to fully hear music to create it. For example, when you go to a festival and there are big speakers, you can physically feel the beat through your body. It’s this idea of feeling the music rather than solely hearing it that helps me create my own tracks.”
To quote Signkid’s lyrics from one of his hits ‘Listen With Your Eyes’:
“Sign songs hit ya, just like a motion picture.
Facial interpretation, my hands as an illustration.
Body language and gestures, all concepts that will come and test ya.
Look at my expression, it’s all about visualisation.
I’m making it my mission to get you, to listen with your eyes.”
"There are still problems with making music inclusive," says Signkid. "When a deaf person buys a ticket to watch an artist perform on stage, they're going because they want to enjoy themselves, but the problem is there are no subtitles, plus there's no interpreter stood next to the artist."
"We have to fight to make live music fully accessible for deaf and hard of hearing people - there are nine million of us in the UK alone."
You can check out Signkid’s signed songs via his You Tube SignkidTV channel and at his Instagram account.
Sign Language Week 2025 (17-23 March) is led by British Deaf Association. SLW is a flagship awareness week for British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language, celebrated every year in March to commemorate the first time BSL was acknowledged as a language in its own right by the UK Government on 18 March 2003.
