Saturday 6th December 2014

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Bells are jingling, lights are twinkling, carols are playing ........

Now we know Christmas 2014 has truly arrived – the 4th annual Deaf Business Christmas Show ushered in the season of Goodwill and Reunion with fantastic success yet again! Taking place at the Clerkenwell Centre the event, on the 6th December, once again highlighted the campaign to promote and increase awareness of Deaf and Hard of Hearing entrepreneurship for both employed and unemployed people. The proportion of Deaf and Disabled people experiencing barriers of access to education, employment and setting up businesses is at a much higher percentage than the national average. This event was originally created to do something positive about the situation.

The event was attended by 135 Deaf and Disabled people, a proportion of these were from overseas - international Deaf people. They were particularly interested in this event as there were few opportunities for Deaf people in their own countries. The organisers, Terra Consultancy, have supported many Deaf entrepreneurs over recent years, including a variety of industries and two promising young Deaf artists and designers who are now running a beautiful newly-opened jewellery e-shop under the brand name ‘Pomme Rose’s Jewellery’ at https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/PommeRoseJewellery which is famous in the Deaf Community.

A Deaf artist, June Hypolite, gave a fascinating presentation about the challenges of her previous experiences at the height of her career in the TV industry, such as being a famous presenter for the programme ‘Sign On’ which ran from 1992 for two years on Channel 4 and which was very popular in the Deaf Community. Sadly, the programme’s funding ended and June, the TV the presenter, lost her job. However, she never gave up and opted to follow a pathway in jewellery design. In her presentation she highlighted her challenges in her journey towards becoming a Jewellery Designer and she insisted that the Deaf can do the same through effort and hard work. June achieved her target of having a jewellery shop and it turned out that she now has a successful online-shopping jewellery business. She explained how she had to sell her unique jewellery designs even if there is competition out there, even if other people are doing something similar.

She made it a success! As a contrast, we had a presentation from Jacqueline’s Cakes. The highlights of Jackie’s talk showed that, no matter how you ever imagined and hoped you would be running a big business, it can happen!

She also showed that a business can be built from your passion for making things. For Jackie Peters it was making craft cakes that started her journey and encouraged esteem for her from her community - so many people were interested in her cakes for their special occasions. She told us about her experiences and challenges in cake craft development, her communication with people ordering cakes and how she learned about how to deal with the management of a new cake business.

Maintaining the theme of the event, our guest speaker from Terra, Dr. Sheila Osmanovic spoke about the main highlights of ‘Try our Wings’, a business initiative aimed at achieving Deaf people’s dream of business success used at Deaf Day in CityLit http://www.consult-terra.com/index.php/events/try-your-wings .

Here she explained to the Deaf audience about the definition of a business and its responsibilities, how to achieve time management through effort and about learning development in the dream to achieve your own business. TERRA Consultancy Ltd. Company, through its pathways, supports and helps Deaf people to achieve their business dream.

TERRA offers support through English, BSL Interpreting Communication, management and personal continuous development. To make a Business Consultancy appointment contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or fill up at http://www.consult-terra.com/index.php/contacts

The day’s event was complimented by an excellent buffet serving healthy and delicious food and drink, plus a cool DJ transformed into VJ (Visual-Jay) played specially for us a unique music selection of heavy bass music so Deaf could feel the drums, bass beats and heavy metal vibes.

Yes!!! Deaf people can dance to the vibrations, even if they cannot hear the music! At the same time there were screenings of BSL Signing Artists changing songs into British Sign Language so the Deaf could understand what the songs were about!

And, of course, how could a Christmas event be complete without the big man in red himself! Our man in red caused a lot of excitement amongst the kids – where else could they ask for presents in British Sign Language but from our Deaf Father Christmas!