ARRT! (The Artists’ Rapid Response Team!) works with progressive groups and organizations throughout Maine, providing images that can help to distill and clarify their important messages about issues that matter to people in Maine and the world beyond our borders. ARRT! is a project of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), a members’ organization of artists helping artists.
Participation in ARRT! is growing all the time, as artists and activists seek ways to contribute and exercise their protected free speech through collaboration, imagination, and imagery. The feeling of community feeds us all and we continue to be joyfully productive. We are honored to work with so many dedicated people and organizations who are making tremendous contributions all around us. Every session allows us to learn about important issues and the work that is being done.
ARRT! has worked with Protect Ancient Forests in the past. The recent banner was created to raise awareness in Maine about the importance of mature and old-growth forest protection and the recent USDA intent to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule. This action would put 58 million acres of our carbon-sequestering National Forests at risk. Declaring an “emergency situation determination” in order to fast-track logging projects across 112 million acres of National Forests would impact 53,000 acres of the White Mountain National Forest in Maine,
ARRT! banner for Protect Ancient Forests.
ARRT! collaborated with Third Act Maine and Maine Youth for Climate Justice to help raise awareness of the cost of the climate crisis on our Maine communities and the chance to move legislation forward to make polluters like Exxon and Shell pay for the projects that protect our communities from storms, floods, and rising sea levels.
ARRT! Climate Polluters Must Pay banner for Youth for Climate Justice and Third Act Maine.
ARRT! Big Oil Prop.
Arrt! banner, Climate Polluters Must Pay, a centerpiece of Third Act Maine’s Advocacy Project during the National Make Polluters Pay Week of Action, January 2024, at the State House in Augusta.
News coverage featuring ARRT! banner.
Yard signs and hand-held placards have been in great demand as individuals and groups look for ways to share concerns about the growing number of issues we are facing daily in 2026.
ARRT! session in Bowdoinham’s Merrymeeting Hall
ARRT! banner advocating for local control for communities of manufactured homes.
Maine Labor Climate Council has been organizing mobile park residents across the state to form cooperatives and purchase the land to prevent the lots from being bought up by private equity or to pass local protective ordinances. ARRT! worked with them to create yard signs, placards and a banner.
ARRT! banner advocating for local control for communities of manufactured homes, Augusta.
White Lions Maine, a group allied with the Black Panthers, that hands out food and warm clothing weekly in Portland, needed a banner to communicate their message of dignity, solidarity and justice.
ARRT! banner for White Lions Maine.
ARRT! banner for White Lions Maine, Monument Square, Portland.
ARRT! group.
ARRT! placard of resistance.
ARRT! placard for BIW protest during Pete Hegseth’s visit.
ARRT! placard made for BIW protest.
Freeport Indivisible held a Valentines’ Day Love Your Neighbors, No Exceptions. event showing love and raising money for the Solidarity Fund. ARRT! helped with the images.
ARRT! banner made for activity below.
ARRT! and Freeport Indivisible fundraiser for Solidarity Fund, Valentine’s Day 2026.
ARRT! placard for bridge rally.
ARRT! placard for bridge rally.
ARRT! placard for bridge rally.
ARRT! placard for bridge rally.
In early March, ARRT! created a banner for two Sanford groups (Stop the Sludge—Sanford and Sanford Clean Air and Water Coalition) fighting a proposed sludge treatment plant.
ARRT! banner to protest sludge treatment plant slated for Sanford.
ARRT!ists at work.
Below are some fish for the Alewife Festival in Pembroke in May. This is the start of a big campaign about salmon aquaculture leases in Cobscook Bay and elsewhere. ARRT! will be hard at work on this issue later this spring.
Join us for the next gathering of ARRT! on 26 April in Bowdoinham. We gather from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Merrymeeting Grange Hall, 27 Main Street. The Bowdoinham Historical Society is our host, and the sign out front says “Merrymeeting Books.” We potluck lunch and provide coffee. Email mayersnatasha@gmail.com for more info, or if you plan on coming.
The Artists’ Rapid Response Team (ARRT!) is a project of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA). ARRT! is grateful for the support of the UMVA and a donor-advised fund of the Maine Community Foundation. UMVA members and others are welcome to join in, and ARRT! is always on the lookout for organizations in need of our services. Check out our website and our Instagram and Facebook pages for updates! Visit our website to see hundreds of the banners, signs, and props we’ve made over the past twelve years.
Full view of the image at top: ARRT! placard for BIW protest.