Creative activism

A fair few years ago, various friends got annoyed when Iceland announced it was resuming commercial whaling, with the usual suspects being particularly quiet on the issue.

The creative friend, who used to work for Das Spiegel, pulled together some designs along the lines of ‘Only in Iceland can you eat a tourist attraction’, the practical friend with access to an office printer, turned the designs into A5 stickers, and closer to home the mischievous friend, mobilised some people, organised teams, and spread stickers across Icelandic tourist posters on the Underground.

2 weeks later an Icelandic MP stood up in parliament, to denounce whaling as bringing the country into disrepute, as evidenced by the wave of sabotaged posters he’d seen on his recent trip to London.

The example is not that subvertising works, or that a small group of passionate people can have an effect disproportionate to their numbers, the theme here is the alliance between creative types, perhaps ‘creativists’, and mischievous types, clearly ‘activists’.

There is a wealth of examples of creative brains playing with both campaign themes, advertising spaces, and in many cases simply aiming for a mind fuck. From adbusters, to Banksy, to the space hijackers. From the Billboard Liberation Front, to the Church of the Sub Genius and the Discordians, from the Reverend Billy to the Yes Men, there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

So the issue in mind, is how to connect creative types to the folk who are happy to risk arrest turning those creative ideas into subvertising, guerrilla or uncommissioned urban art. There are lots of design students, aspiring artists and bored graphic designers languishing at ad agencies, who I reckon would be up for doing the creative side. But is the existing activist movement, grassroots and otherwise, up for doing the dirty work – literally in the case of stencils and spray paints.

Perhaps an investigation into the communities that exist, the graffiti artists, the design forums, and the activists – well I know most the latter. Maybe a new tool, or better yet an organi online community, with some logistical support. Finally an idea or issue, to inspire, to generate a tidal wave of creative ideas something akin to deepwater horizon to mobilise both the creative and activist communities to jam the corporate mass media culture of advertising and marketing.

I have the skeleton of a project plan here, now I just need to find some cash, and some web developer time.