D-PAN, The Deaf Professional Artists Network, is a 501(c)(3) national nonprofit organization based in Detroit, Michigan, founded by Sean Forbes and Joel Martin. D-PAN creates music videos featuring deaf and hard-of-hearing performers. D-PAN is dedicated to promoting professional development and access to the entertainment, visual and media arts fields for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Their first video for "Where'd You Go" by Fort Minor, with Sean Forbes and Rosina Switras, got hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. On Oct. 28th, 2011 D-PAN released their first new ASL music video in a couple years, 'We're Going to be Friends' by the White Stripes. After an announcement on the White Stripes Facebook page, the video went viral, making the front page of reddit, appearing on CBS news and was briefly shown and mentioned on 'The Today Show' on November 3, 2011.
The D-PAN staff consists of Joel Martin (Co-Founder), Scott Guy (Executive Director), Sean Forbes (Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer), Adrean Mangiardi (Director of Film) & Mark Levin (Tour, Merchandise & Online Promotions Manager).
The D-PAN DVD compilation called "It's Everybody's Music, volume 1" sold more than 5000 copies. It includes:
- John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change"
- Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful"
- Eminem's "Lose Yourself" performed by Sponge
- Mini - Documentary "Signing Songs: Making of D-PAN Music Videos"
- And more music videos from community performers.
D-PAN also produced a DVD titled 'Wee Hands Vol.1'.
Famous quotes containing the words deaf, professional, arts and/or network:
“O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)