Edinburgh Napier University

  The arts are becoming increasingly integrated into applied linguistics research as scholarly attention turns towards multimodality, superdiversity (Adami 2017; Blackledge and Creese 2017) and co-production (McKay and Bradley 2016). Adding to this growing body of work, this paper reflects upon a collaborative project led by Edinburgh Napier University’s Critical Design team and Heriot- Watt University’s Department of
Languages and Intercultural Studies. The two-year national project aimed
to creatively advance discussion around the formal recognition of British Sign Language through the BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 and subsequent National Plan 2017-2023. The paper describes the use of antagonistic props to generate new ways of thinking about the relationship between BSL and public life. Throughout four collaborative workshops, participants co- designed a model museum, life-size cardboard figures and BSL souvenirs. We discuss how these ‘boundary objects’ (Wenger 2000) revealed hidden, oppressed, and contradictory relations and how collaborative disruption can be understood as ‘mutually transformative’ (Back 2012). Our paper argues that this curatorial approach to working with BSL users facilitated the disruption of conventional categories of heritage, Deafness and culture. We also argue that these disruptive acts played an integral role in materialising the experiential knowledge of participant-designers. These creative methods represent new modes of showing and telling that encourage playful inter-subjective engagement, empathetic interpretation, and uncertainty as positive values.