Bishop Mark with Chris Luke – Producer Director and Marketing Manager Adelle Hopper gain instruction in Signing form Joe Sheridan, deaf team manager
A love of Coronation Street has led a North East Bishop to praise a remarkable export story for the region.
The Right Revd Mark Bryant, the Anglican Bishop of Jarrow, who is a long-time fan of the soap, often uses plot lines from the programme to make points about life in his blogs.
That led to him being invited as a guest blogger for the show and enjoying a visit to the set
of the Salford-based programme earlier this year.
Following the visit, former Spennymoor churchwarden Christopher Luke, who works at ITV SignPost, invited the bishop to see how programmes are signed for deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
Bishop Mark was shown round the Tyneside offices of SignPost, who are experts in creating accessible on-screen content in British, Irish and American Sign Language for broadcast, online and other media platforms.
Their work covers a wide range of television shows and a large number of children’s stories on the Signed Stories apps which are exported all over the world.
Bishop Mark said: “It is an extraordinary success story from here in the North East. The work being done makes programmes like Corrie accessible to many people all over the world.”
Christopher Luke said: “When I heard that Bishop Mark was such a big fan of Coronation Street and had visited the set it felt like a good idea to invite him to see how the show, and many others, are signed.”
