The Groundswell Collective

• Our Members

  Co-founders James David Morgan and Ryan Christopher Hermens comprise Groundswell's core. Other members participate on a temporary or ad-hoc basis; still others stay for the long term. Currently we are four, adding Rob Hughes and Zac Apte to the Collective most recently. Special thanks to them, and to other past members for their contributions!

• Our Background

  Groundswell began in 2006, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Recognizing the need and desire for creative approaches to activism, we began to contribute to social movements through design and visual arts. Our work is done in activist circles, as part of our organizing efforts, but we also work with clients and collaborate with like-minded artists. We're geographically dispersed, and maintain local efforts in our home towns, where you'll find us in the streets, and maybe even in a gallery one day.

• Our Approach

  What a perfect, perfect world.

  So much order and planning, so many grids, routines and systems. It's mechanical intricacies are astounding and mesmerizing; it has a pulse all its own. Even now the soft, humming anesthesia of the city seeks to replace what thoughts you may still be allowed to have with white noise.

  But we are here to guard against exactly that.

  As citizens, we obediently pay our landlords to let us inhabit the homes we make, and we talk casually of the atrocities that our governments commit in our name – so what does it take to end these absurdities? What new forms must we explore, and how can we assume them? How can we weld visual communication to social justice?

  We come together to participate in scripting an answer to this question. We hope to provide a narrative about these activist efforts while simultaneously participating in them.

  Our work might be described as that design which must be done in pursuit of a more humane and libertarian world, and which claims that notions of freedom and ethical conduct are most poignant when communicated visually. Where mainstream media frames debates, our goal is to open them up or smash them to pieces. Where undemocratic structures put up barriers around our liberties, we are there to subvert them.

  Many of us have carved out wholly unique (and frequently noncommercial) spaces where we conduct our work, and explore alternative design practices as a means, not an end. Rather than sell revolution, or use revolution to sell a brand, we actively participate in creating that cumulative occurrence that is social change.

  In our line of work, influencing systems through design is central to success. If a designer’s work tangibly contributes to fashioning and furthering alternative modes of social organization, it’s working. That design which proffers what could be, and which prefers community and participation thrives in this environment. It's a rebellion against monoculture. Cultural production of this variety questions and dismantles dominant ideologies. It is in character for us to not wish for the reform of unjust systems, but to disrupt them and hand out the tools with which to skirt or dismantle them. We work from an unscripted reality, and alleviate (rather than enforce) politics.

  Through our nonparticipation in anything we believe to be evil, we are forging another route.

  We still sense that there is a life to live, one where we control our own actions, and where the only pulse we hear is not of the city, but the one in our lover's chest. We see a world where people are compelled by their own will, and where no one is subjected to the numbness of being “under control,” because desire of any sort is always our own, and no one can take it from us. We are creating this world and dismantling an old one, for what better way to build a new world than in our hearts!

The Groundswell Collective is Ryan Christopher Hermens and James David Morgan with other rotating collaborators.

Currently we are four, adding Rob Hughes and Zac Apte to the Collective most recently.