The Bees' vision of social change…
Our mission is to build strong, functional connections between
activists that use words, and those that speak in pictures,
to help create more accessible, powerful campaigns for the
important issues of our time. We envision a world where
cultural work and popular education isn’t segregated
from the “box” of how movements for social change
speak to issues… and we think that organizers in the
U.S. have a lot to learn from our counterparts in Latin
America for this shift.
Popular Education…
Cross-pollination is our core
mission at the Beehive. Collaboration is at every stage of
our work.. Our collaborators offer advice, and advocate for
our role in the work they are involved in. In exchange we
supply them with much-needed graphic material in many different
forms and have a unique presence at their events.
The Beehive
prefers to gain its knowledge of issues as directly from
the source as possible, by conducting interviews with
those being directly affected, or organizers that are
specialists on the issues. We research each topic of
our graphics campaigns thoroughly, including visits to
botanical societies for photos of the specific species
of animals and plants we convey, and have our ideas and
facts critiqued by many people before they hatch and
get shouted to the world. Filtering the information for
subtle racist assumptions, cultural appropriation, and
myopic North American perspective through critique
from people of color and those directly affected by the
issues being discussed is an important step in our collaboration
process
An important aspect of our
mission is that all our work is anonymous and anti-copyright,
for free use as popular education tools. We are trying to
dispel the tradition of activism that is based on books,
experts, speeches, and “hoarding knowledge”,
by creating communication methods that are more holistic,
accessible and invite participation… inspiring action,
instead of passive listening or absorbing.
Visual Learning…
The Hive's adventures since the year 2000 have helped
to confirm that images are an extremely powerful medium
for conveying ideas to diverse audiences, across boundaries
of language, age, knowledge levels, and learning styles.
The overwhelming success of our graphics campaigns testify
to the ability of visual tools for conveying ideas in powerful,
effective ways unavailable to other forms of communication.
Our graphics campaigns are
powerful tools that are displayed in a format that encompasses
often overwhelming complex situations yet breaks the information
down into more digestible, and therefore memorable, chunks.
This communication strategy allows for addressing specific
elements of the issue, still in the context of the larger
forces at hand, while transcending boundaries in language
and learning.
Our Presentations…
Our featured presentation, available in spanish or english,
is a portable-mural “tour” comprised of a 16 foot
wide banner version of the FTAA poster, or a 16 foot high
banner version of the Plan Colombia poster that displays the
issues in context of the “bigger picture.” The
banners are simultaneously accompanied by a six-foot tall
fabric storybook, or projected “slide show”
that has forty enlargements of scenes from the poster. Presenters
take turns narrating through the mural’s details and
facts, helping to break down complex issues into smaller,
more digestible chunks. All the while, continually explaining
how they are connected to the "bigger picture.” Us
bees consider it vital to subvert the talking-head-at-the-podium
approach to political discussion. We break down the model
of the "expert" and the "audience"
by relating information across language and learning boundaries.
It’s a wicked healthy way to interact about MORE bad
news…
Check out our tour
flight path to see if we're headed your way! |
