Cape Town’s CommonPropaganda is a non-profit collective of artists and activists working to build solutions for social and political issues through critical engagement between diverse communities in the city. They’ve just teamed up with London’s The Earth Issue, a creative agency committed to environmental and intersectional activism, and sustainable fashion brand Loutre, for a capsule T-shirt collection to help raise funds for CommonPropaganda’s future events.

Over the course of two weeks in March, all parties gathered in Cape Town for creative exchange. Talks and seminars were held with environmentalists, protest movements, skaters and artists. A Community of Philosophical Enquiry session challenged the conventions of the teacher-student dynamic, instead, nurturing the curiosity of all. Meanwhile a tour went to Princess Vlei, a wetlands and recreational space in the Cape Flats treasured by people of colour that was threatened by developer-backed proposals and fought back by fostering over 1,000 local varieties of plants. “It’s an opportunity to get people from the local communities trained in conservation,” says Princess Vlei biodiversity manager Denisha Anand.

The limited-edition, biodegradable organic cotton T-shirt features the message ‘Community of enquiry - Good for the planet - Good for the people’ within a Venn diagram signalling the desire for united action within multi-disciplinary spaces. In a screen-printing workshop guided by Raeez Kilshaw of media and production start-up Shyne4eva, 30 creatives handprinted their own T-shirts.

Loutre’s founder and designer Pia Schiele also extended the storytelling of the project with a shoot featuring the brand’s latest collection of unisex streetwear constructed from upcycled and low environmental impact materials. Each T-shirt sold comes with a zine documenting this collaborative journey.

Buy the T-shirt here.