Campaigner Crowdsourcing for Disability Film
15 January 2015 at 10:00 am
Former Australian Disability Discrimination Commissioner and now Chair of the Attitude Foundation, Graeme Innes, is heading up an online crowdsourcing campaign to fund a documentary series around positive disability stories.
The Attitude Foundation was established to tell stories about Australians with disability using video. Attitude is partnering with Attitude Pictures Australia Pty Ltd to develop a documentary series to be screened on ABC television in a bid to shape a new understanding of disability in Australia.
“We are working to give a voice to the 4 million Australians with disability by telling positive stories. Stories that are life changing,” Innes said.
“Television and documentary films are powerful tools that help shape people's thinking, attitudes and behaviour. Attitude Foundation Limited was established to help fund a series of 26 influential documentary programs on the ABC.”
The online campaign hopes to raise $75,000 with a tipping point of $50,000 via the startsomegood crowdfunding platform. So far the campaign has raised $1690.
“We're calling on you to help us fund the very first episode of the new series which is slated to air on the ABC in 2015. A lot of work goes into telling these amazing stories,” the Attitude fundraising website said.
“If we raise $50,000, we will be able to fund: Pre-production (scouting locations, travel expenses, finding stories etc) for $25,000 plus Production (travel, filming, crew costs etc) for $25,000.
“If we raise our target of $75,000, we will be able to finish the episode in post-production and promote the series to the widest possible audience.
“The stories will show Australians with disabilities engaging in life and relationships, working and undertaking activities in the community.They will be shown as neither victim nor heroes, but agents of their own destinies.”
The Attitude series, which originated in New Zealand 10 years ago, uses the visual medium to drive social and attitudinal change regarding people with disabilities.
“Now the Attitude Australian Foundation aims to fund a new series of original Australian stories produced by Attitude Pictures Ltd for Australian audiences. It has the potential to be a game-changer,” Graeme Innes said.
“For a long time, people with disability have wanted to experience empowering films about people with disability, and to feel that their experiences were shared. So Attitude Pictures is making those films and we’re getting them out to the Australian public.”
Graeme Innes, who is blind, has been a campaigner for people with disabilities since he was three-years-old.
The Attitude website said he started by fundraising for what was then the Royal Blind Society (now Vision Australia) and spun the chocolate wheel with Sir Robert Helpmann at a fundraiser for the Victor Maxwell Kindergarten.
He was Australia’s Disability Discrimination Commissioner from 2005 to July 2014. He helped to draft the Disability Discrimination Act in 1991. He was Australia’s delegate to the United Nations and drafted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
A lawyer by profession, graduating from the University of Sydney and the College of Law, Innes has been a board member since he was 21. He was previously chair of Vision Australia and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
