Rose Ayling-Ellis’ ‘Old Hands, New Tricks’ Reveals Powerful Confidence Boost Through BSL – A Touching Journey That Will Change How You See Communication!
Following on from her 2023 BAFTA-nominated documentary Signs for Change, Deaf actor and campaigner Rose Ayling-Ellis is now teaching a whole retirement village British Sign Language (BSL) in Old Hands, New Tricks – and it makes an emphatic case for the power of sign language in establishing a sense of self.
In my conversations with others about deafness and the formation of a deaf identity, there have been times whereby I note the challenges and stigma surrounding hearing loss in older people. I remember my late grandfather having a pair of hearing aids, but rarely wearing them, due to – what we can only assume – an implication that using them is to acknowledge one’s ageing and accept the need for some assistance on the auditory front.
Yet Rose is clear in this new two-parter: hearing aids don’t solve everything, or rather, they don’t paint the full picture.
Indeed, as I recall my own experience with hearing aids and embracing my Deaf identity, I know I have a youth board run by a national charity to thank for introducing me to the Deaf community and, by extension, BSL.
After the need to wear hearing aids came as a knock to my confidence and self-esteem, BSL helped build it back up, and as I think about Old Hands, New Tricks now, I can’t help but feel like there are many deaf people out there and those with hearing loss who have only experienced the first half of this process. They’ll have been told about their deafness/hearing loss and given hearing technology, without the vital second stage around the community available to support them with understanding this information. As a result, isolation ensues.
Again, Rose is sharp and observant in striking the parallels between the loneliness which can be felt by older people and the Deaf community. Both presentations encourage a mindset in which the individual thinks in terms of limitations and ‘can’ts’ – the conversations we can’t access, the activities we can’t do anymore, and so forth. One of the many charming moments in this series is when Rose tells resident Tina – who has difficulties with her speech following a brain injury – that “you’re more capable than you think you are”. It’s the most striking rebuttal to such a mindset.
And if you want to get poetic and metaphorical about it, then the fluidity of BSL is akin to how it can morph to boost a person’s confidence in many different ways. For one resident, it encourages a new perspective on their visual impairment; for Tina, it’s an easier way to communicate; and in a poignant final note for the documentary, it can give us the confidence to advocate for ourselves in environments where we may not have been as confident doing so otherwise.
When you consider these benefits against all the research around isolation and its health impacts, then there’s a strong case for Rose’s six-week experiment (carried out with the help of BSL tutor Marios Costi) to be expanded more widely.
We must continue to call for the rollout of the BSL GCSE and for the government to provide free sign language lessons for parents of deaf children, but by the same token, it’s time for us to properly consider the breadth of benefits of BSL across a person’s lifespan.
Of course, Deaf people can and should maintain some protectiveness around BSL as a marginalised language tied to its Deaf culture (given its historic oppression), but the case that accessibility benefits everyone cannot be made clearer in Old Hands, New Signs. As Rose says herself: sign language is for everyone.
