CEI has always been interested in the role of arts and culture in Maine’s community and economic development. We believe that the arts have intrinsic value to humans, and also enrich community life and provide meaningful livelihoods. We look for opportunities to invest in arts businesses and nonprofits and to use the arts as a community development strategy. On this page you’ll find examples of CEI’s arts financing role: Beehive Design Collective, our use of art in community/policy development: Mapping the Working Coasts; and two articles we’ve written on arts businesses and institutions and their roles in Maine community life: Brahms/Mount Textiles and Open Door on Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Beehive Design Collective
CEI recently joined with Calais Federal Savings & Loan Association in providing financing for the Beehive Design Collective’s purchase of the historic Clark Perry House in Machias, Maine. Beehive Design Collective, formed in 2000, is a nonprofit collective of artists and community organizers producing posters, fabric banners and other graphic materials as visual teaching tools on international issues such as social justice and globalization in Latin America.
Machias Valley Grange Hall
The Collective also produces stone mosaics on commission. Beehive Design Collective’s grassroots campaigns on social issues have taken them throughout the United States, Canada and Latin America for speaking engagements and residencies at colleges, high schools and in cities and towns. Through these venues, the Beehive’s paper and fabric graphic posters and their message have found a large audience.
Located in downtown Machias, the Clark Perry House, a National Register property, will serve as the Beehive Design Collective’s headquarters--providing housing, studios and space for a growing apprenticeship and artists’ residency program. Beehive’s move to the Clark Perry House comes on the heels of its remarkable renovation of the Machias Valley Grange Hall, which re-opened during a day-long celebration on August 20th. The renovation, accomplished with more sweat than money, returns this building to its place as a home for the Grange and community space/cultural center for eastern Maine.
CEI is pleased to have invested in the Beehive Design Collective and its commitment to social justice through art and community building in Machias.  We invite everyone interested in the creative economy in Maine to visit www.beehivecollective.org/ to learn more.
Grange banner reproduced by Beehive Design Collective for the Machias Valley Grange Hall.
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