Makers and Shakers
Art Invokes Cultural Shifts Needed to Advance Climate Justice
Makers & Shakers is an arts-based project that strives to support campaigns bringing awareness to important climate justice topics through compelling imagery, visuals and diverse modes of storytelling. It is SUTE’s creative home where we explore avenues for advancing culture shifts that are necessary for our society, with the support of talented artists working across diverse mediums. From designing, sustainably-sourcing and ethically-printing merchandise to illustrating creative designs for banners used in direct actions, we transform imagination into a force for systemic change. In the process, we create job opportunities for artists to be fairly compensated for their work and gain more visibility through our platform.
Inspired by the words of Toni Cade Bambara:
“The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.”
Our Arts-Based Campaigns
Shake Up The Establishment has laid the foundation for Makers and Shakers through years of creative, community-based work. Our ethical webstore sees strong traffic with offerings like our fully illustrated, self-published journal Practicing Rest, Recovery, Resistance – now with over 500 copies sold. We’ve created impactful creative assets for major campaigns like Sue Big Oil and the Climate Roundtable for South Asian Diasporas, and our nationally recognized “Get Out The Vote” campaign demonstrated how powerful visual storytelling can drive civic action. From hosting arts-based events to supporting artist collaborations, we’ve proven this model works. We’re not starting from scratch – we’re building on real momentum, with a team rooted in organizing, ethical collaboration, and justice-driven storytelling.
Draw the Line Vancouver
About the Campaign As an organizing partner for the 2025 Draw the Line (DTL) event, SUTE assisted with online promotion. Inspired by the protest's five demands, Mike Redston (our Makers & Shakers team lead) created a custom poster to promote the event. The DTL...
Superbloom Fundraiser
About the Campaign Inspired by the rare and breathtaking phenomenon of a “superbloom,” the SUTE team partnered with Nicole Larsen of Ripple and Rise Studios to create designs that capture the magic of collective change. We chose this concept because it mirrors how...
“It’s Not Radical” Fundraiser with Modern Wanderer
About the Campaign In celebration of Earth Day in 2025, Modern Wanderer teamed up with SUTE to re-launch their "it's not radical to want a liveable planet" upcycled sweater with 15% of proceeds being donated to SUTE. The sweaters are made from 100% upcycled material...
How to Support and Get Involved in Makers & Shakers
Arts & culture is a climate solution, and yet there’s a critical lack of funding for arts-based work. Challenging dominant narratives is integral to solving the climate crisis, and art is uniquely equipped to shift hearts and minds and motivate people to take action. It is an effective tool to convey powerful messages and has a unique ability to inspire action across diverse audiences to help bring more people into our movements. Not only that, but art helps with eco-anxiety, offers a creative outlet for emotional processing, and invites dreaming of creative solutions that support resiliency-building.
- Have a campaign idea or initiative that could benefit from creative design work? Reach out to us with information on your budget, your needs and your dreams and we will get back to you within 3-5 business days about if we’re able to help set up a team to support.
- Are you an artist looking to support climate justice through your work? Email us your portfolio, skills and fee structures (if applicable) and we’ll add you to our internal database of artists open to being contacted to support and collaborate on different projects.
- Donate materials or services – if you have access to art supplies, design/editing software, printing, shipping or other services that you can offer to us to make this work more affordable, please contact us.
- Help us fund this work – We are seeking opportunities to partner with funders who believe in the power of art to drive systemic changes. We invite you to reach out to us if you would like to explore ways to help us sustain this project long-term.
Please feel free to contact us via info@shakeuptheestab.org