The Attitude Foundation’s second television series Perspective Shift is currently airing on ABC Television. The aim of the Foundation is to promote and develop media content that realistically portrays the lives of people with disability, to effect positive change in community attitudes and inclusion.
Perspective Shift’s initial series screened on SBS in 2019. Its popularity led the ABC to pick it up and it will screen on Compass this month.
The show is backed by The Attitude Foundation, which was co-founded in 2014 by a small team including former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes AM and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Assistant Secretary Cain Beckett.
Disappointed with the pace of change in community attitudes towards disability, the Foundation has pursued a different strategy.
“We despaired at the pace of improvement in social policy and in the degree of inclusion of people with disability in Australian society. The biggest problem for people with disabilities was – and is still – ‘everyone else’,” the co-founders said.
“After 50 years of UNCRPD, appealing on social justice, disability rights, society generally listened, agreed the situation was terrible but then returned to what they were doing before, rather than change.”
“So we schemed, and agreed the best way to rewire Australia’s inclusion of people with disabilities, was to be less overt. To use the same mechanism that everyone else is using to rewire the way you think without you knowing, through the media and television!”
“Our first partner was ANZ Bank, and you can see the impact this had in their advertising initially with Dylan Alcott AM, this year’s Australian of the Year,” said Cain.
Perspective Shift airs on Compass on Sunday at 7:30pm on ABC TV Plus (channel 22) and ABC iview. Catch the encore on ABC TV at 6.30pm the following Sunday.
“Please enjoy it, they are great stories, and forgive us if they quietly shift your perspective.”