{{short description|British deaf activist, lecturer and interpreter}} <!-- Note: This article is part of "BSL lives", a project to add at least 50 new articles on British Deaf people to Wikipedia in 2021. Please make sure you understand the nature of the subject before reviewing it.--> <!-- Note: Where "Deaf" is given with a capital D is correct as it denotes somebody as being culturally deaf as opposed to just someone who has become deaf --> '''Clark Denmark''' is a British activist, lecturer and interpreter. He is deaf and a British Sign Language (BSL) user, and he is widely recognised within the Deaf community for his role in advancing the recognition and wider understanding of BSL.
==Activity== Born and educated in Scotland, Denmark worked at Durham University, where he joined a task force between the BDA and University to develop a sign language training course, which provided teachers with a formal qualification.<ref>{{cite web|title=Clark Denmark Remembers: Sign Language Teaching in the UK|url=https://www.signteach.eu/index.php/5-8-uk/clark-denmark-remembers}}</ref>
He also joined the editorial team of the British Sign Language Dictionary. The Dictionary collects over 1,800 pictures of signs, as well as their definition and explanations, and was published in 1992.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last= Brien|editor1-first=David|editor2-last=Brennan|editor2-first=Mary|date= 1992|title=Dictionary of British Sign Language |location= Durham|publisher= Faber & Faber|isbn=0571143466}}</ref>
He then joined the University of Bristol's Centre for Deaf Studies when the first degree in Deaf Studies was established in 1992. He taught sign language and deafness-related subjects there for the following 15 years.<ref>{{cite web|title=The BSL Bill is about our fundamental human rights|date=14 September 2015 |url=https://bda.org.uk/the-bsl-bill-is-about-our-fundamental-human-rights/}}</ref>
He then worked at UCLan on the BSL QED, a project funded by the British Government aimed at bringing British Sign Language in line with the European Language framework, in order to draw a national higher education curriculum for teaching BSL and to create teaching materials to support teachers of BSL. The linguistic resources were made available online.<ref>{{cite web|title=BSL QED Project|url=http://bslqed.com/BSL_QED_Research-i-4.html}}</ref>
While at UCLan, Denmark achieved an MA on Deaf studies with a thesis on teaching English to Indian signers through e-learning.<ref>{{cite thesis|title=iSLanDS student achieves MA for thesis on teaching English to Indian signers through e-learning|date=May 2012 |publisher=University of Central Lancashire |url=https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/8558/|type=masters |last1=Denmark |first1=A. Clark }}</ref>
In 1988 he met Princess Diana, who had become a patron of the BDA and was keen to learn more sign language. She was privately tutored by Denmark, and she wrote the foreword of the British Sign Language Dictionary and delivered an address at the BDA's centenary celebrations in 1990.<ref>{{cite web|title=Diana and me: Clark Denmark|url=https://www.historypin.org/en/share-the-deaf-visual-archive/geo/51.506506,-0.069711,7/bounds/49.476498,-0.069711,53.449938,-0.069711/search/keyword:diana/sort/-date_taken/paging/1/pin/1141699}}</ref>
Well known within the Deaf community, Denmark currently appears often as a television Deaf interpreter on the BBC working for Red Bee Media, translating the news live from spoken English into Sign Language, and as a presenter on the BBC programme See Hear.<ref>{{cite web|title=Clark Denmark on IMDb|website=IMDb |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2702793/}}</ref> In 2017 Denmark became the first Deaf person to interpret BBC news live into British Sign Language.<ref>{{cite news|title=Should the UK offer BSL Interpreters during Political Debates?|url=https://femaura.com/2017/05/16/uk-offer-bsl-interpreters-political-debates/}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=7 things you might have missed during Sign Language Week!|url=https://limpingchicken.com/2017/03/18/7-things-you-might-have-missed-during-sign-language-week/|publisher=The Limping Chicken}}</ref>
==References== <references/>
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Denmark, Clark}} Category:Academics of Durham University Category:Academics of the University of Bristol Category:Academics of the University of Lancashire Category:English deaf people Category:BSL users Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Scottish deaf people Category:British disability rights activists