The DESIGNS Project – 2017-2019

We wasted no time in the new year and launched our brand new education and training project called DESIGNS.

The DESIGNS project brings together partners from 4 EU countries who are renowned experts in the fields of Employment, Education and Training, Sign Language Interpreting and Training, and Deaf community advocacy. The overall aim of the project is to create VET and CPD training resources and exchange best practices across Europe to facilitate greater participation of Deaf sign language users in employment.

Our expert partners include:

• Interesource Group (Ireland) Limited
• European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (efsli)
• European Union of the Deaf (EUD)
• University of Humbolt of Berlin
• The Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS), Trinity College Dublin
• Association for Higher Education Access and Disability (AHEAD), and
• Centre for Translation & Interpreting Studies in Scotland (CTISS), Heriot-Watt University.

The meeting of the international partners took place in Deaf Village Ireland in January, followed by the first in a series of Town Hall sessions, which was streamed and watched live by 8,000 viewers and with an additional 11,000 viewers watching the session after the event on Facebook. The event – with 11 speakers, generated much international interest from around the globe, and the session ended with an exciting questions and answers session moderated by the Irish Deaf Society’s chairman, Eddie Redmond.

Over the next 24 months some of the other results we now look forward to launching are a series of handbooks for the employers in all partner countries, a comprehensive online course, masterclasses for interpreters and the deaf community and a research documentary which features experiences of Deaf job seekers, policy makers and employers. efsli has been working on developing a template of a portfolio of competencies which SLIs can use to record their continuous professional development (CPD) activities, and we look forward to sharing this with you in the very near future. The Irish team will be on a diplomatic mission in May and will be sharing the DESIGNS vision and meeting consular officials of the Balkan states in Belgrade.

As the project progresses, do check in with our team and as always – if you would like to get involved in any shape or form – drop us an email

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @designsproject and do visit the website www.designsproject.eu