Bees are Coming!

ROCK BOTTOM in the Age of Extreme Resource Extraction: Fracking, Sulfide Mining, and Tar Sands in the Great Lakes Region The Beehive Collective brings its giant posters and stories to Decorah Tue, October 7 at 7:00 PM  @ArtHaus, 508 W Water St A swarm is coming! Members of The Beehive Design Collective, a non-profit arts and activism organization dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots,” are heading this way to share stories and images depicting today's greatest challenges. The event is free and open to the public.The Beehive is an all-volunteer swarm of educators, artists, and activists using images to communicate and educate about the complex realities of our times. The dizzyingly detailed, hand-drawn, large-format posters and banners are portable murals that come alive through storytelling, illuminating how single issues are interconnected and part of bigger systems. Join in as the Bees deconstruct often overwhelming global issues in an engaging and interactive presentation, using metaphors from the natural world to connect social and environmental struggles. ROCK BOTTOM is a special new presentation, using allegorical images from "The True Cost of Coal" and "Mesoamerica Resiste" graphics and informative stories from around the Great Lakes bio-region.The Bees’ strive to go beyond illustrating only the bad news, rounding out the talk with stories of grassroots organizing, collective action, and inspiration. The story begins with exploring the legacy of colonial and industrial expansion,connecting that history to today’s top-down development plans and resource extraction. It continues with examples of resistance and alternatives, especially organized and led by Indigenous peoples. Celebrating ecological diversity is also a priority, with a cast of characters that includes many hundreds of species of insects, animals, and plants!The collaboratively produced, educational illustrations were created through an intensive and ongoing process ofgrassroots research. After graphics are completed, Bees tour all of the world to distribute the completed graphicswidely as tools for storytelling, popular education, organizing, and movement building. Contact: Sponsored by the Community Rights Alliance of Winneshiek County, CommunityRightsAlliance.org. More on the Beehive at www.beehivecollective.org