About the Steady State Manchester logo
Our logo combines a bee with a doughnut. Here’s why.
The logo was originally designed by Marc Roberts and redrawn by us with a fresh look at the end of 2017.
To us the bee suggests,
❃ Sociability: conviviality and co-operative, collective
action;
❃ Industry, or economy: the satisfaction of necessary
needs;
❃ Ecology: the natural world of interdependence, and
its fragility.
Elsewhere, weve sprinkled red and green bees on the covers of our key publications.
And the bee is also the symbol of our city, Manchester, that we want to see leading through example, as a society and economy for all, not just here, but in other places, and other times too. Since we adopted the bee, as a result of the bombing of Manchester Arena, the Manchester bee symbol has become popular as a symbol of resilience and solidarity among cultures. We also note that the bee doesn’t just refer to the city of Manchester. Salford has its own bee and there are other bees in Greater Manchester, for example the fine marquetry picture in Bramall Hall. Can you find more bees in Greater Manchester? There are many more at this link.
The doughnut is a symbol devised by the economist, Kate Raworth. It symbolises the safe space for humanity, between the minimum level of goods and services needed to maintain a life with health and dignity (originally referencing the Millennium Development Goals) and the upper limit of material and energy use beyond which human activity causes irreversible damage to the earth’s systems that make life possible (the planetary boundaries). We use the symbol with Kate’s permission.
Steady State Manchester 