NOTWITHSTANDING: 100 Years of Eugenics In Alberta, Stage Left's contribution to Alberta's Centennial celebration; Big Secret Theatre, Calgary (2005)

WELCOME TO DDMAAC
THE DEAF, DISABILITY & MAD ARTS ALLIANCE OF CANADA
​STAGE LEFT's NATIONAL NETWORK, OF ARTISTS EXPERIENCING DISABLEMENT

Shifting the focus:
From access back to non-normative aesthetics.
What was established twenty years ago as a site of cultural autonomy, artistic self-determination, and collective representation...is now a site of inclusion wherein disabled people are dependent on the non-disabled for access to the arts.
​Michele Decottignies, 
​Stage Left Productions

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VISION: Through DDMAAC, Stage Left cultivates grassroots conduits of cultural affinity, artistic autonomy and disability justice in Canada's Deaf/ Disability/ Mad Arts domain, and promotes the collective interests of artists whose lived experience of disablement advances artistic and aesthetic non-normativity.

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Advocacy & SUpportS FOR DDMTSC* Arts

DDMAAC is Stage Left Productions' national network of diverse DDMSCT Arts* contributors, and a hub of systemic-change advocacy in Canada's DDMSTC Arts domain. We do not, however, aspire to represent nor lead the entire domain. More specifically, DDMAAC supports Stage Left collaborators who are marginalized from the domain, as a result of its neoliberalization and the classist imposition of "access" (to a mass culture that relentlessly devalues people who live with any kind of impairment? No thanks!).

Through DDMAAC, Stage Left offers solidarity and support services to socially and culturally diverse members of our company who experience disablement in the professional arts ecology, who seek a practice of autonomy over inclusion and who understand that "access" is merely a condition of artistic practice, not the end goal. 

We consequently collaborate with other radicals (catalysts of systemic change vs. inclusion) to advance disability justice, throughout the professional arts ecology: The advancement of counter-cultural, non-normative aesthetics, through the integration of decolonization, anti-racism and anti-oppression into production and presenting processes.  

contributions TO DDMSTC* Arts

Michele Decottignies, Stage Left's founding Artistic Director, has contributed the following to the DDMST Arts domain:

1. A non-normalized National Arts Support Organization 
2. A national Presenters' Network 
3. A national Artists' Network
4. 10 annual Disability Arts Festivals, in 8 years & 2 cities
5. 25 original, multidisciplinary productions
6. 30 digital films
7. 35 independent artist commissions
8. 25 community-based/ amateur productions
9. 10 self-advocacy & community inclusion programs
10. 75 professional training labs
11. ​14 national DDMSTC Arts gatherings
12. ​A Practice-Centric Framework of the domain
13. Paid work for over 10,000 DDMSTC artists/ workers
14. The Access to Accommodation Spectrum (of inclusion)
15. Accommodating production & presenting models
16. Decolonized approaches to all things "DDMSTC Arts" 
17. A LOT of successful policy & funding recommendations

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*DDMSTC Arts:  D/deaf/ hard of hearing; Disabled/ person with a disability; Sick/ spoonie/ survivor; Traumatized; Colonized....

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DDMAAC acknowledges the Original Peoples in Canada as the sovereign stewards of the traditional territories we now occupy. We also acknowledge our Treaty obligations, and work daily to maintain good relations and uphold the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. 

We apologize for not yet being able to secure the funding needed to bridge the digital divide; meaning that we can't afford to provide full and proper access to our website and literature (which is ironic, considering that DDMAAC is Canada's only national arts support organization specifically attending to the collective interests of professional, diverse artists who live with some form of impairment!). 

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An initiative of Stage Left Productions
Making the invisible VISIBLE
c/o Box 8007 CANMORE MAIN
Canmore, Alberta   T1W 2T8
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unique ART. 
 distinct CULTURES.
 non-normative AESTHETICS.