Junction49 - Idea - London flash mob!

Created on: 18 Jan 2008
Idea status: Done and Dusted
Town: Southwark, London

Owners

whistler Member

What it's all about

I wanna organise a flash mob in central london on the 30th January in the evening...I've heard about mobile clubbing, silent discos etc and I think we could harness this to get a message across about an issue people care about! I'm pretty open minded about what it is at the moment but I want it to make a statement!

What's needed to make it a reality

Ideas!! What do you reckon we could do...maybe something to do with anti-consumerism in/near a shop, or it could be connected to a particular charity campaign...hmm...let me know what you reckon - even if it's just a thought - let's get the creative juices flowing :)

Available actions

Fans of this idea

utopian Member
Go Member
TemperedRadical Member
Helen Member
Alex Member
Joey Sawyer Member

Comments

Elaine 16:26, 18 January 2008 Houw about doing something around getting people to think twice about using carrier bags.
Maybe everyone could have a re-useable canvas bag and give it to a passer-by with a carrier bag encourage them to re-use bags?
whistler 11:49, 22 January 2008 Hmmm yeah we'd have to be somewhere where lots of people have plastic bags...like outside a supermarket perhaps...
zw!tch 12:22, 22 January 2008 Maybe something could be set up so a few people have plastic bags that break and others appear to help and offer a canvas bag?
whistler 14:34, 28 January 2008 if we substitute walmart for tesco... what you think?

Buying nothing at Wal-Mart
Twenty of us walked into Wal-Mart - the largest retail company in the world. We each took a shopping cart and walked silently and slowly in an unbroken line up and down, down and over, pushing our empty carts through endless canyons of products. Sometimes the line got split up, by a real shopper, or a curious child, or a near convert; but the line always reformed, rejoined, moving randomly, inexorably toward what? Toward the sex of our church picnic, toward the mouth frothing, eye rolling, religious fervour of sheer notshopping...

...The cop finally approached us - and we were tentative with our entreaties. "The Church Officer, The Church, The Church of Stop Shopping." He came to understand that we had simply and lawfully worshipped in a Wal-Mart. Maybe we were Odd. Maybe we put the Odd in our God! But he understood we were just celebrating buylessness...

...We heard him murmur something to himself. Then a pause, silence, he looked across the street to the big box no man's land and said "Well our founding fathers did say that every healthy democracy needs a little revolution once in a while". Revolution? Who said anything about a revolution? Let's just Stop Shopping! Amen.
Alex 11:46, 01 February 2008 Hey guys,

This was great fun to be part of, even though Network Rail asked us to stop after 10 minutes, which is something that only underlines the need for more actions like it! In a world of rules and barriers people need a bit on anarchy, generosity or down right silliness to give them faith in other people in my opinion. And it was all worth it for the one person who said that we'd made her day! Can't wait for the videos and pics from it!
Jo & Andy 12:02, 01 February 2008 I hope we cheered up some people's day on Wednesday when we gave them a flower. I enjoyed taking part in this flash mob (apart from the scary train staff) and my friends all said that is the friendliest flash mob they have heard of. I would be happy if someone randomly gave me a flower. Andy and I are considering giving them out in Durham when it gets a little warmer.
zw!tch 12:24, 01 February 2008 Yeah! Quite a few people seemed genuinely happy to get the flower - and surprised that there was no catch - just a random act of kindness...
Helen 13:29, 01 February 2008 I really enjoyed this event, It was great seeing the confused expression on peoples faces change into a big grin when they realised we were genuinely just trying to be nice. Would have been hilarious had we all been arrested but good that we weren;t. It was such an easy thing to do that made a lot of peoples days just that little bit happier I will definately do soemthing like this again, It made me really happy too seeing the effect on others.
alice 16:30, 01 February 2008 Hey Guys, I'm really interested in flash mobs for good causes. Do you know of any others coming up or that have been done? The one the other day sounds interesting, what did you do in the end? Sorry I'm a bit new to this...
Helen 16:40, 01 February 2008 Basically we got some bunches of flowers such as gerberas and handed out individual flowers to people at Euston Station. It was somthing so simple but it was really effective, people's response was very positive- if you exclude the rail staff and police asking us to stop! Everyone we gave the flowers though seemed to birghten up in front of you which was so nice to see.
alice 16:58, 01 February 2008 did you have a particular cause or was it just a random act of kindness? both are lovely but just wondering... x
zw!tch 17:14, 01 February 2008 just a random act of kindness but also in connection with Junction49 - we gave most people a Junction49 flyer with their flower

we are planning to be involved in organising lots more of these in the near future - and there will be more details up soon, so if you'd like to be involved alice that'd be great! we are open to any ideas and for anyone (ideally aged between 16-25) to get involved!
Celina Jevons 16:29, 06 February 2008 Hey Guys,

This was great thing to be part of, people seemed so surprised that you were trying to be genuinely nice and we werent trying to get money out of them! If there are any photos from it I would love to see them if they get put up on the site :-)

Celina