Inspirational Social Art

cascadia solstice rainbow pride

Books:

When We Fight, We Win: Twenty-first Century Social Movements and the Activists that are Transforming Our World
 

Organizations

Beehive Collective:

The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.

http://beehivecollective.org/

Beautiful Trouble: 

Beautiful Trouble is a book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.

Bread and Puppet Theatre
Peter Schuman’s Vermont based theatre project, check out the website and videos on the site and on youtube, and then read B&P’s soul restoring “Cheap Art Manifesto.” 
 
Justseeds
Started by Josh McPhee, now a worker owned cooperative, Justseeds has been collecting and distributing socially engaged street and print art for decades. Josh McPhee is also the author of the fabulous book, Stencil Pirates, the book most often stolen from my high school art studio. 
 
Accompany this with the film “Bomb It,” an inspiring look at the global culture of graffiti. (2007)

Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK):

The NSK State was created in 1992 by the groups that belonged to the arts collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). These included Laibach, IRWIN, Noordung, New Collectivism and the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy. Neue Slowenische Kunst was founded in Ljubljana in 1984 as socialist Yugoslavia was beginning to fracture. By the end of the decade the NSK groups had won a reputation throughout Europe, North America and Japan. Their works and actions commented on many of the political events of the past three decades, and NSK is now generally acknowledged to have played a key role in the political and cultural history of Slovenia and the former Yugoslavia; it is credited, among other things, with making a substantial contribution to the pluralisation of society and culture in the 1980s.

https://passport.nsk.si/en/about_us

DIY Toolkits and Resources