Exploring Unconscious Bias – An introductory workshop

Why explore Unconscious Bias?

Unconscious Bias (UB) is often in the news, as an explanation for people’s discriminatory behaviour and as a way of addressing such behaviour, for example, through UB training.

Interpreters have said that training would be useful to help understand more about UB, and so this is a workshop to address that.  In the workshop we discuss the limits of workshops like these, and what you can do to address those limitations.

Discussion of UB then naturally leads us into an exploration of how we evaluate some of the norms that contextualise and influence the way we think about ourselves and others, what we see, and so how we work.

What will we cover?

In this very interactive workshop, where all of our thinking on and experience of these issues will be useful, we explore three main areas:

• Unconscious Bias (UB):  What is Unconscious Bias, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and UB in the real world.
• Unconscious Bias and the Interpreter / Translator:  How does UB impact on interpreters / translators?
• Unconscious Bias and interpreting / translation:  The challenge for interpreters and translators and strategies to address UB.
• What can we do to address bias? 

During the morning, Unconscious Bias and the IAT will be explored, then in the afternoon this thinking will be applied to our profession and ourselves, using examples to focus discussions. The day will conclude by looking at what we can do and next steps.

Who are we?

Josef Baines and Darren Townsend-Handscomb will be delivering the taught sections, and facilitating the discussions. As this workshop will focus on bias and discrimination, we want you to note before you book to attend, that whilst there are many facets to our identities, both Josef and Darren are white, middle aged (Darren at least), middle class, men.  If this is a barrier to your participation in this workshop, then let us know, and we can let you know if the workshop is being run again in future with different facilitators.

Please note that the workshop will be delivered mainly in BSL (Josef is a deaf BSL user).  If this is a barrier to your participation, please let us know.

Who is the workshop for?

The workshop is aimed at trainee and registered interpreters and translators, Deaf and hearing.

Before and after the workshop:

This workshop is introductory, and we cover a lot of different concepts and ideas.  To get the most of this opportunity, before the workshop you’ll need to do the Implicit Association Test (IAT) online (information will be emailed once you’re booked on a workshop).

And then after the workshop you can explore these ideas further through reading (we’ll send you a suggested reading list) and activities that you can do yourself or with peers (we’ll send suggestions).

The workshop will be delivered face to face, unless lockdown etc. rules and/or sensible Covid precautions require us to provide the training remotely.

If face to face the day will run: Saturday 16^th October 9:00 arrival for 9:30-5:00.

If we have to deliver the workshop remotely, because all day on Zoom is just too hard, we will run the workshop as follows:

Saturday 16^th October 9:15 log in for 9:30-1:00.

Sunday 17^th October 9:45 log in for 10:00-1:30.

Whilst we understand it is inconvenient, we strongly recommend booking in your diary both the Saturday 9:00-5:00 all day and Sunday morning 9:45-1:30, so that you have the flexibility to switch to the remote arrangement if needed.