An advertising agency creates a one-time action for traffic safety, then uses documentation to generate awards and free promotion for their company. Did traffic fatalities actually drop after this was done once? Their Press Release doesn't make mention.
From McCann's Press Release:
The White Bikes are the best known acts of creative activism by the Dutch group Provo. The political wing of the Provos won a seat on the city council of Amsterdam, and developed the "White Plans".
Baadal Nanjundaswamy, a Bangalore based artist who works at an advertising agency uses his art to embarrass the civic authorities into fixing the potholes that litter the roads of Bangalore.
The first legislative victory of the Civil Rights era was obtained by hundreds of people going where they weren't invited. In 1961, Black and white Freedom Riders, well trained by SNCC in nonviolent action, rode Greyhound buses from Washington DC southwards primarily in order to wait, together, in waiting rooms that were still unconstitutionally segregated.
For the past few years, I've been creating what I call "art of social conscience:" tv spots, viral emails, paintings and posters, but none of it has engaged viewers as much as this series of "historical" markers, each one a small story containing a discrete point of view.
The Miss Rockaway Armada is both a collection of
individuals and an idea. At its most basic, the idea is this: we’re
going to float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New
Orleans on rafts that we built ourselves. The crew can be called many
things: artists, musicians, builders, travelers, organizers, dreamers.
Ask one of the people who help build and move these crafts for the
The Survivaball made its first appearance in 2006, when "Halliburton representatives" attended a conference on catastrophic climate change and demonstrated the functionality of the large inflatable suits ("a gated community for one"), which keep corporate managers safe from global warming. Not long afterward, in Berlin, the Yes Men learned they also work as disruptive, arrest-resistant tools.
It took 17 high schoolers, eight mentors from Kansas City and a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia to create the first ever social media powered car.
The concept was to bring MINDDRIVE to life with tweets, posts, shares and likes which were monitored by an Arduino device. This open-source, single-board microcontroller triggered the vehicle’s motor based on the number of tweets and posts about the project.
In the 2012 presidential election, did you know that one of the underdog anti-party runners was Gumby?!
In the attached video, you will hear Gumby offer transportation alternatives (Pokey and friends), challenges of not believing in vice presidents, and the importance of people and clay-people working together.
The New York City subway is many things, but clean isn’t necessarily one of them.
It doesn’t exactly smell great, either.
While the MTA hedges on solutions (and continues to debate whether eliminating trash cans from the stations actually solves sanitary issues), the artist and School of Visual Arts student Angela H. Kim is waging a personal guerilla war against the olfactory offensiveness of it all.
A group of young adults under the name of "Love Tijuana" (Amemos Tijuana) celebrated the one year "Birthday" of a pothole located at the Via Rapida (Tijuana's Freeway) with balloons, banners, and even hats.
Mexican truck operators, members of the national transporters union (Trabajadores de la Alianza Mexicana de Organización de Transportistas A. C. (Amotac) ) organized a national strike across the most important and circulated freeways of the nation. Hundreds of cargo vehicles blocked the way, preventing other vehicles to continue on their route.
In 2017, the political party Ahora Buenos Aires (Now Buenos Aires) was running in the legislative election for the first time. It is not easy being a small left-wing party in the City of Buenos Aires, therefore imagination is an essential part of a campaign if you want to get the attention of the media and voters.
"Mimes gesture as they stand in a crosswalk in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday Oct. 7, 2011. The mayor of the city's eastern district of Sucre has launched a unique program aimed to encourage civility among reckless drivers and careless pedestrians, putting 120 mimes at intersections to politely and silently scold violators"
In São Paulo, just like in many other metropolitan regions, public transport is not as effective as it could be. Buses and trains usually run overcrowded, late and on limited hours, so that owning a car increases a lot one’s comfort. But not everybody can afford to have one, so a clear and recurrent class distinction occurs: public transport is mostly used by poor people.
A group of protesters calling themselves the "Gmuni dancers" block a Google Bus from moving on 24th Street at Valencia Street on Tuesday April 1, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif.
Zheng Xi 郑熹, a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on gender studies at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Zheng has launched a campaign asking city governments around China to display anti-sexual-harassment logos, complete with a groper’s “salty-pig hand” visual (etymological context here), alongside other commonly displayed public safety logos on places like subway trains and buses.
Cyclist activists from the Koce, Return to the Street initiative set up sculptures symbolically showing the marginalization of cyclists in the city, the inadequate and dysfunctional infrastructure for this means of transport, but also to point out the large number of trampled bikers in Skopje.
Spearheaded by Latitude Artist Community, Project Easy Access Lexington (PEAL) organized team 'Bricksquad' to help make the sidewalks and streets of downtown Lexington, KY more wheelchair accessible. Armed with only a canvas bag of few bricks, sand, and some tools the teams would make their way through the sidewalks restoring bricks as needed. The damage to the sidewalks was such that the gesture was symbolic more than effectual initially.
A rescue drone for refugees in danger whilst traveling across the Mediterranean Sea.
Last year alone, 3,500 refugees perished attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The Avy Search and Rescue Drone is specifically designed to help refugee boats. The drone is capable of flying long distances, detecting vessels, and can drop life jackets, life buoys, food supplies, medication and communication devices.
Drones for Good Competition
In the autumn of 2001 the fare strike started in Stockholm. A hike in fares forced us - activists in the Syndicalist Youth federation - to take action.
Ghostbikes.org is intended to be a site for the worldwide cycling
community where those lost on dangerous streets can
be remembered by their loved ones, members of their local communities,
and others from around the world. They also hope to inspire more people to
start installing ghost bikes in their communities and to initiate
changes that will make us all safer on the streets.
In 2001, Peter Gibson, a street artist, began by painting bike additional bike lanes onto the streets in Montreal because he was tired of how cars dominated the road. This transferred into more works criticizing car culture in general. Some of his work includes a crosswalk turned into a large footprint and lines on the road transformed into life lines.