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
​A STAGE LEFT NETWORK, OF ARTISTS WHO EXPERIENCE DISABLEMENT

Shifting the focus:
From access back to non-normative aesthetics.
What was established twenty years ago as a site of socio-political autonomy, artistic self-determination, 
and collective counter-culturalism...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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DDMAAC promotes the collective interests of artists whose lived experience of disablement cultivates artistic autonomy, aesthetic non-normativity, cultural affinity and health equity – in and through impairment-informed artistic practices. ​​

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PROVIDING ACCESS TO ARTistic innovation

DDMAAC is Stage Left Productions' national network of diverse disability arts contributors, and a hub of systemic-change advocacy in Canada's professional arts sector. 

We do not, however, aspire to represent nor lead the entire dis arts domain. In fact, DDMAAC supports artists who are marginalized from it, because its sole focus is on the single issue of "access" (to a mass culture that relentlessly devalues people who live with any kind of impairment? No thanks!). 

DDMAAC instead offers solidarity and support services to socially and culturally diverse artists who experience disablement in the professional arts ecology, prioritize autonomous production over inclusion and understand that "access" is merely a condition of artistic practice, not the end goal – and especially not the artistic vision! 

DDMAAC cultivates opportunity for productions that represent the lived experience of disablement and collective resistances to it. We thus also co-develop models of artistic creation that integrate accommodation, disability justice, decolonization, and pluralism (not just the cultural kind) into development and presenting processes.  

BUILDING an artistic DOMAIN

Michele Decottignies, Stage Left's founding Artistic Director, and DDMAAC's coordinator, has contributed the following to the national Dis Arts domain

1. A National Arts Support Organization
2. A national Artists' Network
3. 10 annual Disability Arts Festival
4. A national Presenters' Network
5. 25 original, multidisciplinary professional productions
6. 25 original, multidisciplinary community productions
7. 30 professional digital films
8. 35 professional artist commissions
9. 10 self-advocacy & community inclusion programs
10. 75 professional training labs
11. ​15 national Dis Arts gatherings
12. ​A Practice-Centric Framework of the dis arts domain
13. A Practice-Focused Disability Theatre Knowledge Hub
14. Paid work for over 10,000 diverse artists/ workers
15. The "From Access to Accommodation" guide
16. Accommodating production & presenting models
17. Decolonized approaches to all things dis arts
18. A LOT of successful policy & funding recommendations

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DDMAAC's use of "Dis Arts" is meant to be inclusive of artists who are DDMSTC:
D/deaf/ hard of hearing; Disabled/ person with a disability; Mad, person with a mental illness, survivor of psychiatric incarceration; Sick/ spoonie/ survivor; Traumatized by lived experiences of systemic injustice; Colonized by imperialists....​ But that's way too wordy for way too many of us. So we use "dis arts". 

DDMAAC's framing of "Disablement":
Disablement is a social condition that impairs vulnerable populations. Disablement stems from socially-imposed processes of hegemonic bias, exclusion, inequity and disenfranchisement that results in poorer health outcomes for entire communities. DDMAAC thus takes up Health Equity models. 

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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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DDMAAC: An initiative of Stage Left Productions:
Using the arts to affect personal and social transformation. 

unique ART. 
 distinct CULTURES.
 non-normative AESTHETICS.