The world of an ordinary person is made up of a wide variety of sounds: other people’s voices, music, the roar of a metropolis, the noise of wind, rain, peals of thunder, the chirring of cicadas and the singing of birds. Even the quietest night in the countryside is full of sounds: the creak of a wooden floor, the rustle of leaves outside the window, the buzzing of insects and the splash of water in a neighbor’s pond. We live in a world of sounds and cannot imagine what it is like to find ourselves in complete silence and to communicate with the world using other senses.
The first 'In Silence' museum opened in Moscow in 2020. The idea of creating this unusual museum came to Maria Aizina by chance: a group of hard-of-hearing children came to a tour of one of her projects without an interpreter. The team conducted the tour so successfully using gestures and emotions that the idea of creating a place where people could communicate without barriers captivated Maria. The project was so successful that 'silent' museums opened in Saint Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, and temporary exhibitions were held in other Russian cities.
The social mission of the project is to create a tolerant community, to build a 'bridge' between the worlds of hard-of-hearing and hearing people, and to teach visitors to make contact using sight, smell, touch and emotions. In addition, 'In Silence' has become a platform for employing people with various hearing impairments. The museum employs guides who are hard of hearing and those with complete hearing loss.
The museum's exhibition includes five interactive zones where experienced guides, in complete silence, teach guests to speak using gestures, to 'listen' with their eyes and to feel music with their bodies. During the tour visitors wear special noise-reducing headphones that sharpen the other senses and, in a playful format, help them learn various methods of communication and the basics of the Russian sign alphabet.
In addition to the main tour, the museum runs other interactive activities: workshops on tastes and smells and quests to test intuition. The museum can also host romantic dates and birthday parties. The price of standard tour tickets ranges from 325 to 850 rubles. There is the option to purchase combo tickets and gift certificates for museum visits.
