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A scrapbook reads: "A Beginner's Guide to Disability Culture, Touch Compass, a Video Series". Polaroid photos of people are also in frame. Design: Elise Cautley.

The Beginner's Guide to Disability Culture: Touch Compass

By The D*List

For episode one of ABGDCA, we visited a Touch Compass dance class, and spoke to dancers and kaimahi about what it's like to be part of the Touch Compass community. 

  • The Beginner's Guide to Disability Culture in Aotearoa is a video series that welcomes people to learn about disability arts, sports, and community. 

    For most of us, our first experiences of learning about disability are through the medical system. We’re never been offered any guidance on how to live as a disabled person; how to embrace disability identity, and make disabled friends, and live a full disabled life.

    We hope this series will welcome more disabled people into their community, and in turn give us collectively more power to push back on ableist attitudes.

    The first episode focuses on Touch Compass, Aotearoa’s leading professional disability-led arts organisation. We visited a Touch Compass dance class, and spoke to dancers and kaimahi about what it's like to be part of the Touch Compass community. 

  • Thank you to the researchers and funders that made this series possible. This mahi was based on the research project 'Apprehending ableism in Aotearoa New Zealand' by SHORE & Whariki Research Centre at Massey University. They were funded by the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

    Learn more about the research here.

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