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Beehive Design Collective

Based in Maine, USA, but working throughout the country. The Beehive Design Collective is a predominantly female, volunteer-based design group that develops graphic design campaigns in the form of custom-made banners and freely distributed posters which serve as educational materials for raising awareness on a wide array of issues including globalisation, industrialism, climate change, pollution, militarism, colonialism, and biotechnology. Working as a non-profit, grassroots activist organisation whose income derives predominantly from donations, their mission is to spread awareness of environmental sustainability, organic agriculture and the importance of supporting local economies, through their design work as well as lectures, workshops and anti-copyright images. The True Cost of Coal is an epic banner produced collectively by a number of the ‘bees’, following two years of collaborative research, story development, and meticulous drawing. The banner examines the impact of coal mining on human and ecological communities and unfolds as an intricate and encyclopaedic narrative revolving around the history of coal and industrialisation, and the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. The result is an expansive visual landscape, dense with metaphors drawn from the natural world, populated by plant and animal characters who resist the onslaught of industrialisation and the insatiable appetites of corporations. Both visually stunning on account of its complex draughtsmanship, but also undeniably utopian in its aspirations, the work is an anti-industrial gesamkunstwerk that enjoins a leap of the imagination in trying to envision a better world and a cleaner planet, while at the same time being a rallying cry behind all grassroots resistance movements fighting for change. KG