Category: Culture Jamming/Subvertising

I did a Free Shop this week­end, and it was bril­liant. Free Shops make a pos­i­tive stand against land­fill, con­sumerism, social iso­la­tion and cli­mate change. Let’s have a sum­mer of free shops every­where — at your local com­mu­ni­ty fes­ti­val, on your high street and heck, why not, lets have one against the G8 in Auchter­arder too!

This week­end I set up a Free Shop at the New­cas­tle Com­mu­ni­ty Green Fes­ti­val. By Sun­day it was run­ning itself. This report tells you how to do one, and some of the good things you might get out of it.

The resources need­ed were one small gaze­bo ( bor­rowed ), two tables ( bor­rowed ), a mark­er pen, a bit of gaffer tape, and a vantrip on sat­ur­day morn­ing to deliv­er the first 10 bags of stuff. All that was left at the end was one bin lin­er half-full of ripped and mud­dy bin­lin­ers and plas­tic bags — but as many peo­ple request­ed the bags to car­ry their items away, even that was­n’t too bad.

Amongst the items giv­en away were a gui­tar, three cam­eras, 7 beech seedlings, 2 conker trees, 6 ‘ted­dy bear’ sun­flow­ers, a dozen boardgames, at least 20 pairs of shoes, at least 7 bin­bags full of clothes ( includ­ing swim­ming cos­tumes, pin­stripe suits and bras ), at least 30 books, at least 30 cds, at least 20 videos ( both chil­dren’s and adult ), at least 20 com­put­er games and pro­grammes, crock­ery, fry­ing pans, a dozen mugs, place­mats and orna­ments, a dozen bags, play­ing cards, at least a dozen keyrings, at least a dozen cud­dly toys, a bag of mina­ture sol­diers, 2 water can­nons and a water pis­tol, bags of mar­bles and boun­cy balls, lock­ets and neat con­tain­ers, tea from dar­jeel­ing, incense from new del­hi, fab­ric from thai­land, hip­py clothes and so on. All these things were junk to the peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of them, and they were all in imme­di­ate dan­ger of end­ing up in land­fill.

This was the first time that I’ve known a Free Shop to be not just about giv­ing stuff that we’ve col­lect­ed away, but for oth­er peo­ple to actu­al­ly bring stuff along and keep replen­ish­ing the stock. Tak­ing place on two con­sec­u­tive days was cru­cial for this, and it real­ly worked as a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry exchange sys­tem. For exam­ple, on Sat­ur­day one lass said she was leav­ing the coun­try in 4 weeks time and need­ed to get rid of all her stuff, which duly turned up on Sun­day. I’d pret­ty much run out of my col­lect­ed stuff by Sun­day, so the only rea­son it kept going was cos peo­ple kept deliv­er­ing stuff. I’d wan­der off for a cof­fee, only to find anoth­er 3 bin­bags on my return which I could then spread out and shout ‘get your free stuff here’ and draw anoth­er crowd. One indi­vid­ual brought along a whole batch of longlife light­bulbs with slight­ly dam­aged pack­ag­ing, maybe 50 of them?, and we split them into indi­vid­ual lots to spread around.

Chil­dren picked up things to give to their par­ents ( I had to be care­ful the rude books did­n’t go to them ), and most pleas­ing to me, non-hip­py local moth­ers would come along with their kids and fill a plas­tic bag with the things that appealed to their chil­dren. The so-per­fect-it-almost-makes-you-retch moment was when a woman appeared with a box of baby clothes. She said ‘i’ve got a load more things in the car. they’re every­thing you need for a girl from 0 to 2 years old’ ( a bit spe­cialised, i won­dered, for the free shop? ). So she asked for a hand to unload them, and whether I thought they’d be of use to any­one. Then a sec­ond woman who’d been going thru stock on the oth­er table said ‘well i’m expect­ing in 5 weeks, and it’s going to be a girl’. So I put the two of them togeth­er, they had a chat, and off they went to the car — where I think all the stuff got deliv­ered to the 2nd wom­an’s home.

Oth­er high-lights:

Hav­ing chat­ted to me on Sat­ur­day, a fes­ti­val vol­un­teer and his daugh­ter brought along their 4 foot high play-kitchen on Sun­day, com­plete with plas­tic food and uten­sils. This was pos­si­bly the star offer of the week­end and it attract­ed a lot of atten­tion, but it final­ly went to the grand­par­ents of a young girl. Although I’d writ­ten ‘deliv­ery offered on this item’ on it they said ‘ah no, we just live over there’ and so they car­ried it off towards the sta­di­um end of the park.

Some­one, I for­get who, left mon­ey on the table so I had great fun shout­ing out ‘even the mon­ey is free’ and it was ages before any­one took it — in the end we had two blokes rum­mag­ing thru the clothes rac­ing to find it, with me going ‘warm, warmer, arr your hand almost touched it!’

Sev­er­al stall­hold­ers and per­form­ers got real­ly into the free shop too and said it was one of the best things they’ve seen at a fes­ti­val in ages. On Sun­day for exam­ple, when a clown was float­ing bub­bles on the lake, he got pushed in by a gang of lads and, he says, got very close to los­ing his tem­per. He was soaked, so he came along to the Free Shop and picked him­self up a dry set of clothes and was very grate­ful for it. ( He also donat­ed a bag of trin­kets and assort­ed items ). A cou­ple of our per­form­ers who ear­ly on Sat­ur­day picked up some clothes, then decid­ed to come back every hour or so to donate one pack of bat­ter­ies and one set of recharg­er things each time.

Lots of peo­ple were chal­lenged by the idea of things being free and had to get over their guilt or dis­be­lief, but once they did they were all very chuffed. One chi­nese guy in par­tic­u­lar had to keep ask­ing the price of the small items he was tak­ing, because his eng­lish was­n’t great and he did­n’t want to make a mis­take. One young girl in a wheel­chair who came both days, was so keen that I start­ed to get annoyed with her hang­ing round the stall and try­ing to get the best stuff as soon as it arrived. Most peo­ple how­ev­er were unnec­es­sar­i­ly polite to each oth­er, a lit­tle bewil­dered and scared of get­ting told off, and the only scram­ble for items took place when I got some boun­cy balls out of the bag and there hap­pened to be 20-odd kids from a steel band around the stall!

Two of us took turns to man the stall. But by the time we were start­ing to get tired of it on Sun­day, two teenage lads who I had­n’t met before inde­pen­dent­ly took over and had great fun shout­ing how every­thing was free and must go. I’d expect­ed at least a cou­ple of bin­lin­ers of unwant­ed clothes at the end, but some­how they man­aged to get rid of every last bit. I found only one skirt left as lit­ter in the park.

I great­ly enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple, which cov­ered such top­ics as how to care for sun­flow­ers, why land­fill was bad and got dumped next to where peo­ple live, con­sumer cul­ture, the his­to­ries and prove­nance of items, char­i­ty shops, what to do with mon­ey instead, and so on. Com­ments includ­ed ‘it’s made my day’, ‘all shops should be like this’, ‘it’s not real­ly free is it’ and ‘if only i’d known i’d’ve brought…’

I promised peo­ple the free shop would become a reg­u­lar fea­ture at this fes­ti­val, and will adver­tise it more wide­ly next year.

Free Shops can also work on high streets, at gigs and on your neigh­bour­hood street cor­ner. A bit of pre-adver­tis­ing helps but is not essen­tial.

A host of heav­en­ly angels from THRONG (The Heav­en­ly Right­eous Opposed to Nan­otech Greed) appeared today unto a nan­otech­nol­o­gy busi­ness con­fer­ence in order to bestow a “Can of Worms” Award on a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nan­otech­nol­o­gy Indus­try. Cho­sen to receive the award was Mr Har­ry Swan, for­mer­ly of Mon­san­to, who is Nan­otech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er of Britain’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of car­bon nan­otubes, Thomas Swan & Co.

Nan­otech­nol­o­gy, the manip­u­la­tion of mat­ter at the lev­els of atoms and mol­e­cules (a mil­lion nano-angels can dance on the head of a pin), is being tout­ed to Indus­try as “the next big thing” despite major con­cerns over its safe­ty and dis­rup­tive soci­etal impacts.

Hold­ing a ban­ner that read “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — its not big and its not clever”, a dozen angels sang a melod­ic cho­rus of “Hark the throng of angels sing, Nan­otech’s a dodgy thing” as the “Can of Worms” award was pre­sent­ed by THRONG archangel Sarah Phimn. She cau­tioned del­e­gates against the fool­ish attempt to rush nan­otech­nol­o­gy to mar­ket: “Where these nano fools rush in we angels fear to tread”, she said.

The “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — Deliv­er­ing Busi­ness Advan­tage” con­fer­ence is intend­ed to con­vince UK busi­ness­es to adopt this con­tro­ver­sial set of tech­nolo­gies. The con­fer­ence, fea­tur­ing speak­ers from arms com­pa­ny BAE and chem­i­cal giant ICI, is in part spon­sored by The Insti­tute of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — a UK Nan­otech Trade Group whose back­ers include GM crop com­pa­ny Syn­gen­ta, food giant Unilever and defence con­trac­tor Qine­tiq.

“The same greedy cor­po­ra­tions who messed with the genet­ic basis of life are now seek­ing to alter and pri­va­tize nature right down to the atom­ic lev­el”, explained THRONG spoke­san­gel Pan­do­ra Spocks. “We want to warn com­pa­nies attend­ing this con­fer­ence that get­ting into nan­otech is real­ly not a clever idea – for soci­ety or their busi­ness”

This is the first in what is hoped to become an annu­al “Can of Worms” award cer­e­mo­ny. This year’s prizewin­ner, Har­ry Swan, is very famil­iar with open­ing cans of worms: He was respon­si­ble for Mon­san­to’s pub­lic rela­tions attempt to con­vince the pub­lic to accept GM foods — just a small taste of the big­ger con­tro­ver­sy over nan­otech­nol­o­gy still to come.

Notes to Edi­tors:

- For more details, pho­tos and video con­tact Gabriel: +44(0)7746 411539
email: angelsagainstnanotech@crapmail.com

- Copies of the infor­ma­tion giv­en to del­e­gates and of Sarah Phimns award pre­sen­ta­tion speech will be avail­able at http://angelsagainstnanotech.blogspot.comand www.indymedia.org.uk

- Details of the con­fer­ence can be found athttp://www.imeche.org.uk/

- The Insti­tute of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy can be reached atwww.nano.org.uk

- THRONG are not affil­i­at­ed with THONG (but we offer them a tip o’ the hat!) seehttp://www.chicagothong.org/nanocommerce.php?photo=061

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Award Speech giv­en by Sarah Phimn, THRONG Archangel, at “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy-Deliv­er­ing Busi­ness Advan­tage” con­fer­ence, Bucks UK — 9th Dec 2004

“Broth­ers and sis­ters
Be not afraid. We have tid­ings of great impor­tance. We are here on behalf of THRONG (The Heav­en­ly Right­eous Opposed to Nan­otech Greed) to hand over the first ever “Can of Worms Award” to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the nan­otech indus­try.

We have been watch­ing the earth­ly plain for many mil­len­nia and from the fir­ma­ment we have noticed of late many fools rush­ing into the great nan­otech­nol­o­gy gam­ble. This caus­es us much con­cern. Those we see rush­ing into nan­otech include: the great fool­ish armies of the world; the fool­ish US pres­i­dent and of course the transna­tion­al com­pa­nies fresh from mak­ing fool­ish things such as weapons (like BAE Sys­tems), pes­ti­cides (like BASF) and GM Crops (Syn­gen­ta).
Where these nano fools rush in, we angels fear to tread.

Our angel­ic host will pass out amongst you hym­nals to explain our con­cern.

And its not just us in the heav­en­ly high get­ting our halos in a twist about small things. Envi­ron­men­tal groups, the insur­ance indus­try, trade unions … why even roy­als and roy­al soci­eties are issu­ing stern warn­ings:
— about the tox­i­c­i­ty of nanopar­ti­cles.
— about the mil­i­tary use of nan­otech­nolo­gies.
— about how nanosen­sors will increase con­trol and sur­veil­lance.
— about how nan­otech­nol­o­gy will strength­en cor­po­rate pow­er.
— about patents on mat­ter.
— about cir­cum­vent­ing dis­abil­i­ty rights.

It is clear to us that the emerg­ing field of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy is an almighty can of worms fraught with prob­lems, dan­gers and, lets face it, real­ly bad PR prob­lems..

And so we are here to present the first ever Can of Worms Award to:
Mr Har­ry Swan (of Thomas Swan and Co.)

Now.. you might not all realise but Har­ry is no stranger to open­ing messy cans of worms.

He was PR spokesper­son for Mon­san­to. He had the job of con­vinc­ing the British pub­lic that they want­ed GM foods. Oops!
Lat­er Har­ry took a job with a com­pa­ny that helps big oil and biotech com­pa­nies attack envi­ron­men­tal and human rights groups. tut tut!

But with an unerr­ing nose for new cans of worms, Har­ry has now returned to the fam­i­ly firm to stake its future on becom­ing the UK’s major pro­duc­er of car­bon nan­otubes — tox­ic asbestos-like fibres.

Har­ry, with nei­ther reg­u­la­tions, safe­ty tests or a clear lia­bil­i­ty regime in place for nan­otech­nol­o­gy we can already hear those worms squirm­ing .. You are a very deserved win­ner of this can of worms..
But real­ly we would advise you NOT to open it.…”

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A Nano-hymn

Hark the throng of angels sing, nan­otech’s a dodgy thing
Piece by piece the world defiled
God­like sci­ence run­ning wild
Care­ful al ye peo­ple wise
Nano could be your demise
We will not coop­er­ate
With your cor­po­rate nano-state
Hark the throng of angels sing, nan­otech’s a dodgy thing

Leaflet at:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/12/302569.pdf More info from:
http://angelsagainstnanotech.blogspot.com/

Video at:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/12/302638.wmv

8 pages of news of GM actions and cam­paign­ing in the UK and beyond.

UK news
Amaiz­ing Grace — Bay­er aban­don Chardon LL
Wot no tri­als — only one UK GM field tri­al in 2004
Off with their heads — Bay­er sack bio­science boss­es
Whine and Cheese par­ties (a Super­mar­ket spe­cial) — reports on super­mar­ket actions, stop­ping GM ani­mal feed and spot­ting new­ly labelled GM foods
British Biopira­cy — Eng­lish Nature to allow bio­prospect­ing in UK nature reserves

Inter­na­tion­al news from
Aus­tralia (Bon­za no canola!), New Zealand, US, Cana­da, India, Phillip­ines and the CBD in Malaysia

pdf down­load: http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/XUpdate/GUissue26.pdf
txt down­load: http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/XUpdate/GUissue26.txt

More infor­ma­tion on the Genetix Update, the Genetix Update archive and how to sub­scribe to the paper ver­sion of the update go to http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/genetixupdate.htm