Category: Culture Jamming/Subvertising

The truth is out — buy­ing stuff does­n’t make you hap­py! Cen­tral Leeds today saw a free shop sprout from the pave­ment to dri­ve the mes­sage home.

Despite the cold and rain, a hardy group set up a free shop in Cen­tral Leeds this morn­ing, offer­ing burg­ers, books, records and clothes. The man­i­fes­ta­tion of peo­ple giv­ing stuff away in the mid­dle of con­sumer-land raised a few eye­brows, enter­tained the tired mass­es and got the idea across that buy­ing loads of use­less stuff is a futile activ­i­ty. The assem­bled free-shop­pers sang a vari­ety of sub­ver­tised car­ols and hand­ed out gift vouch­ers which were “redeemable for what­ev­er takes your fan­cy” includ­ing a pic­nic in the park or play­ing your own music. All in all, a grand day out in town.

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To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, 12 peo­ple from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the city cen­tre.

Activists cre­at­ed a mobile rat race that stopped off at the city’s busiest malls and high streets.

Peo­ple in rat cos­tumes hur­ried hith­er and thith­er between the edges of the rat race maze, built out of plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, while Fat Cats advised that hap­pi­ness was just around the cor­ner if the rats would only keep shop­ping!

At Cas­tle Mall the rats were flum­moxed by secu­ri­ty guards who forced them to move on; after all, the rats were only telling peo­ple to buy more stuff!

A thou­sand leaflets were hand­ed out (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port.

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It seems that Trans­port For Lon­don have bowed to activist pres­sure and decid­ed to remove all the adverts from the dis­trict line.

I nev­er would have thought that TFL would have tak­en part in buy noth­ing day, but it seems even Red Ken want­ed to join in the fun.

A group of Space Hijack­er agents were trav­el­ling across Lon­don when we spot­ted a TFL dec­o­ra­tion team, swift­ly turn­ing all of the adverts on the Dis­trict Line around so that their blank sides were fac­ing out.

They then post­ed up offi­cial Lon­dON stick­ers pro­claim­ing:

“As part of TFL’s £10 Bil­lion invest­ment pro­gram, Lon­don Under­ground are remov­ing all adverts from trains to improve the ambi­ence of car­riages and the over­all trav­el­ling expe­ri­ence of pas­sen­gers.”

We can only applaud this bold move against the con­stant cor­po­rate assault on our sens­es.

The team we saw doing it were very quick, man­ag­ing to swap around entire car­riages of adverts in less than the time it took the train to trav­el one stop. Infact so impressed were our agents that we kept an eye on the trains and spot­ted the advert free car­riages sev­er­al days after.

On the trains we over­heard one of the pas­sen­gers ask­ing “but what are we going to read?”, the TFL spokesper­son replied “You could try talk­ing to each oth­er?”

Three cheers for TFL 😉

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80’s slo­gan t‑shirts are back in fash­ion! A group of Space Hijack­er agents decid­ed to wear the very lat­ests trend set­ting t‑shirts on a ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ jaunt around Lon­don.

A team of Space Hijack­ers secret agents head­ed into Knights­bridge in Lon­don on Sat­ur­day to cel­e­brate Buy Noth­ing Day, a day of cor­po­rate chain­store chaos.

Wear­ing the very lat­est ‘Nu Rave’ slo­gan t‑shirts our intre­pid agents decid­ed to go and have a look around some of Lon­don’s most exclu­sive stores. Our first stop was Har­rords, and after avoid­ing the piles of fer­rar­i’s, porsches and mer­cedes, we man­aged to get instore and up to the top floor.

Our trendy “EVERYTHING IN STORE HALF PRICE TODAY” t‑shirts cer­tain­ly raised some eye­brows from the fash­ion con­scious cus­tomers, sev­er­al even came up and start­ed ask­ing us for direc­tions etc. Help­ful and polite as always we direct­ed cus­tomers, tidied up messy rails of clothes and gen­er­al­ly played the part of good mem­bers of soci­ety as we walked around the store.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the secu­ri­ty teams seemed to have oth­er ideas, and promt­ly attempt­ed to round us up and eject us from the store! Cries of the fact that our shirts were the very lat­est kather­ine ham­nett design­er shirts, seemed to fall on deaf ears, and we were told that we may be arrest­ed if we entered the store again!

Oh well, nev­er mind, onto Guc­ci and Louis Vuit­ton for some design­er win­dow shop­ping. Enter­ing the Guc­ci bou­tique in Knights­brige we quick­ly found out that there were more of us than actu­al staff present, which was an enter­tain­ing prospect. How­ev­er, in a move which was obvi­ous­ly down to brand envy, we were once again eject­ed. The secu­ri­ty even fol­lowed us across the road and into Louis Vuit­ton call­ing out “Don’t let them in, it’s a prank!” as we entered the store. Why the cheek of it!

After look­ing around and help­ing cus­tomers choose their lug­gage we decid­ed to leave the store and wel­come peo­ple inside from the streets. How­ev­er the weath­er was get­ting rather nip­py by this point, so after a swift drink we decid­ed to head into Oxford Street and onto Nike Town and Top Shop.

The secu­ri­ty here was rather oafish to say the least, with three of our agents being dragged down to a spe­cial Top Shop instore prison which they have behind the coun­ters. Thank­ful­ly after threats of sue­ing for wrong­ful impris­on­ment, and the fact we had a lawyer and crim­i­nal bar­ris­ter amongst our ranks things were soon put right.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly after all of the excite­ment of deal­ing with the grumpy secu­ri­ty, we for­got to actu­al­ly buy any con­sumer goods. Oh well, best go back next year 😉

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day — Edin­burgh Action

Today was Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing day. Activists took to the streets all across the globe to try and per­suade those who can afford to live con­sumerist lifestyles to think about how much they need all the things they buy.

In the run up to the Christ­mas shop-a-thon it is easy for many peo­ple to for­get that the best things in life are free. Do we real­ly need those things we buy? Is spend­ing mon­ey on use­less crap the only way to show loved ones how much we care for them? Of course not!

Clowns from Ram­pant Reekies, the Edin­burgh gag­gle of C.I.R.C.A, played games, danced and were gen­er­al­ly sil­ly on the streets, enter­tain­ing peo­ple with­out sell­ing prod­ucts. They also joy­ful­ly invad­ed shops, includ­ing HNM, GAP, BHS and Schu, and “brought mirth and mer­ri­ment to the dazed monot­o­ny of Christ­mas con­sump­tion.”

A Food Not Bombs stall gave out free food in the form of pea soup, banana smooth­ies, bread and apple pie. Many shop­pers walked straight past the hot-dog stall and had some love­ly veg­an soup for lunch instead. A chalk mes­sage on the pave­ment read “there is such a thing as a free lunch!”

A mobile Free Shop set up on the street to give things away for free. Many peo­ple came and found use­ful items to take away, or gifts for peo­ple which they were oth­er­wise going to buy. One man said sim­ple “this is the best thing I’ve ever seen” and a pass­ing woman exclaimed “I’ve seen jum­ble sales, but nev­er this!” A pass­ing Police Offi­cer even inquired if there was any mobile phones, as he was going to buy one that day but could­n’t now he knew it was Buy Noth­ing Day.

A per­son claim­ing to be from Soci­ety for a Trans­for­ma­tion to Imag­i­na­tion Not Cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion (S.T.I.N.C) approached the stalls and informed the BNDers that they had released non-harm­ful stink bombs in a fast-food stores on Princes Street to “make it clear — Cap­i­tal­ism stinks”, although this remains unver­i­fied.

The recep­tion from passers by was gen­er­al­ly quite good. While some did­n’t under­stand the point of it, many skep­tics came and had a chat a left with an under­stand­ing of what Buy Noth­ing Day is about, along with some free stuff. Hope­ful­ly some shop­pers will decide to make gifts for Christ­mas instead of pay­ing some­one else to.

Many involved real­ly enjoyed the day and felt that it was effec­tive, so look out for more Food Not Bombs activ­i­ty in Edin­burgh.

The For­est Cafe (www.theforest.org.uk) is hav­ing a week long Free Shop upstairs begin­ning on the 14th of Decem­ber.

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On Sat­ur­day the 24th Novem­ber Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter and Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action (MCA) held a free stall where a wide range of things from plants, to clothes were well received. Even a cou­ple of police offi­cers joined in.

The two groups joined in the ‘Rein­state Karen’ demo which began in the Peace Gar­dens and marched through Man­ches­ter in sup­port of free speech and free health care.

Sev­er­al folks then went to the Arn­dale Cen­tre and released a ban­ner attached to pink heli­um bal­loons, which read: “Shop­ping Costs the Earth.” It float­ed up to the roof, right next to the giant Christ­mas Tree, to remind peo­ple of the social and envi­ron­men­tal expense of pur­chas­ing.

In the Traf­ford Cen­tre anoth­er activist from MCA dis­rupt­ed shop­ping, in protest at the mas­sive amount of car jour­neys it encour­ages in the name of prof­it.

For more info about free stuff and links check out www.freemanchester.org

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Activists from Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action evac­u­at­ed var­i­ous parts of The Traf­ford Cen­tre dur­ing this years buy noth­ing day, Sat­ur­day 24th of Novem­ber. The sprawl­ing palace to point­less con­sumerism owned by the £2bn Empire of Peel Hold­ings, the cli­mate crim­i­nals who bought you such delights as Liv­er­pool, Durham Tees Val­ley, Robin Hood Don­cast­er Sheffield and Sheffield City Air­ports also pub­licly opposed the Man­ches­ter con­ges­tion charge. Cam­ou­flaged cova­lent cam­paign­ers in their finest design­er labels moved stealth­ily amongst the madding crowds whilst acti­vat­ing fire alarms and inter­rupt­ing the dai­ly toil of tedious trans­ac­tions.

Alarms in the main malls cov­er cer­tain zones and not the whole com­plex. They are silent for 30 sec­onds, sound­ing only in the secu­ri­ty office. This leads to lots of peo­ple in red jack­ets run­ning around look­ing con­cerned. When the alarms did sound it was accom­pa­nied by a mes­sage over the P.A telling peo­ple to ignore it and approach a mem­ber of staff if con­cerned. How­ev­er, sound­ing the Alarms by the exits of the large depart­ment stores such as Sel­f­ridges and John Lewis leads to the entire shop being evacuated……Oh dear!