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THE BEEHIVE COLLECTIVE IS SEEKING NEW WORKERBEES!

CURRENT POSITIONS AVAILABLE click Below for more info!

Illustration Collaborator - Grange Co-coordinator	Information about Summer Work Party Coming Soon!

In anticipation of our most exciting and busy year to date, featuring the launch of two new graphics campaigns, our swarm of 17 is in need of three more worker bees. We are currently seeking two passionate and committed folks to join us full-time in Maine, at satellite Hive locations, and on the road, beginning as soon as possible. New bees will participate in project work, as well as supporting the administrative and day-to-day functionings of the organization.

Please pass this note on to others who might be interested!

The Hive's Alternative to salaries

In exchange for their efforts and commitment, all Bees, both full and part time, are provided with (exceptionally amazing) food and housing for the time they are involved, in Maine or on the road. Indeed, this does not cover other expenses that you may have such as healthcare or debt, but we will support you in coming up with a work plan that can address your specific needs. Bees committed beyond six months are eligible to receive Americorps benefits such as school debt deferment, an education stipend and health care. Thus far, we've found this approach to be the best way for us to honor the work of each of us equally, while avoiding dependency on unstable foundation funding.

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About the beehive

We are an all volunteer, non profit art-activist collective, dedicated to making anti-copyright images for use as educational tools. Our mission is to "cross-pollinate the grassroots." We value collaborative work, creative problem solving, and dismantling colonial mentality. As the bee metaphor dictates, we are endlessly busy in the effort to illuminate the connections between single issues and the "big picture." Our organism requires long hours, patience and a solid sense of humor, but is consistently surprising, rewarding and personally transformative.
(click HERE to read more specifics)

How to Apply

We'll be interviewing for these positions throughout February and March, so it's best to get in touch immediately if you're interested. Write or email us a letter of introduction using our “20 Questions” as a guide. Leave us a voicemail at (207) 669-4117 and we’ll mail you a copy, or check out our TWENTY QUESTIONS

current projects with openings

MAINE OUTREACH & GRANGE PROJECT

The Beehive Collective has been cultivating community and sustainability in the town of Machias and Washington County, Maine since we established our roots here nearly 10 (whew!) years ago.

Our work Downeast has centered around the Machias Valley Grange Hall, a building we have painstakingly restored and now operate as a drug & alcohol free space for community events during warm months. We facilitate community groups’ use of the building for gatherings, dances, musical events, exhibitions, meetings, craft fairs, and other functions, while also providing some programming of our own. In 2009, it is our intention to initiate new programs which best suit the needs of the community by maintaining ongoing dialogue with local folks and fostering youth leadership in programming.

We see this work operating within the context of many pressing land-use, environmental, and economic justice struggles throughout Maine and the rural US. We believe community building on a regional scale can play an integral role in the creation of a more equitable and sustainable society. It is our intention to continue to cultivate relationships of solidarity with other folks organizing on a grassroots & community-based level throughout the state of Maine. As a design Collective, we hope to use the arts to nurture the sharing of resources, ideas, and solutions that will generate more unified and meaningful grassroots efforts towards sustainability.

In 2009, in addition to continuing structural improvements to the Grange building (now on the National Registry of Historic Places!), we will be engaging in community dialogues and intentional relationship-building with local and regional stakeholders to envision and develop arts-based programming for the space.

Learn more about the Maine-based work of the Beehive here:
http://www.beehivecollective.org/english/thegrange.htm

MESOAMERICA RESISTE

The linework of this graphic is nearing completion and inking is underway!

Now more than five years in the making, this project began in 2004 with six months of first hand, on-the ground research in Central America and Mexico. A team of ten Bees investigated and documented grassroots and community-based alternatives to the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), now renamed Proyecto Mesoamerica.

Proyecto Mesoamerica is a ‘megadevelopment’ plan to build a web of industrial and transportation infrastructure from southern Mexico through Central America to Colombia. Like its global counterparts, Project Mesoamerica aims to colonize the land and people of this region in the name of resource extraction and "efficient" global trade routes. The title of the graphic, ‘Mesoamerica Resiste,’ reflects our efforts to illustrate and share stories of grassroots movements working to oppose top-down development through horizontal, community-based organizing.

Depicted by the Beehive as an elaborate pen and ink drawing, with over 450 distinct species of plant and animals, Mesoamerica Resiste is now in the homestretch of completion!

The Mesoamerica Resiste! graphics campaign team includes artists, organizers and researchers. About a dozen people have contributed to the Mesoamerica Resiste! project since 2003. Currently in the studio, 2-3 illustrators are in the final stages of inking the graphic using rapidograph pens on watercolor paper (and also experimenting with quills). Once completed, the graphic will come to life as a 3x6-foot, two-sided poster to be printed in the tens of thousands. We will distribute it internationally, along with multi-lingual educational material, as a tool for organizing and education throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The Hive’s graphics campaigns are anti-copyright and self-published. Everyone who contributes to the research, design and production of the graphics is personally anonymous in that we all answer the question “who made that?” with "the Beehive Design Collective." We cross-pollinate with grassroots networks for distributing the posters and doing speaking tours, picture-lectures and workshops.