Brandalism Takeover. Visual communication on the street

Brandalism is a movement against the visual pollution of our city streets. This artistic revolt started in Great Britain, in 2012 and its goal is to reclaim visual spaces occupied by corporations and their advertising campaigns.



The street is a site of communication, and it belongs to the people who live there. This space from everyday life is often invaded by corporate billboard advertising that not only changes our perception of the public space but can also change the way we feel about ourselves.





Back in 2012, sick of feeling out of place in their own city, two friends in Great Britain decided to take back their space, by reclaiming billboards and replacing them with another type of visual content – artworks! Street Art in the purest sense of the term: something that was born on the street, for the street. 





Their initiative quickly caught on and the word spread far and wide: the most recent Brandalism Takeover in May saw the reclamation of over 360 corporate advertising spaces with handmade original artworks submitted by 40 international artists over a two-day period in 10 UK cities (Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, Oxford, London, Brighton, Bristol and Birmingham). 





None of the artists sign their works because this is not a project of self-promotion, it is a way of taking back public space and replacing adverts with art, it’s peaceful guerrilla art that fights the visual assault and standardization of our cities.

Project: Brandalism UK http://www.brandalism.org.uk/
Location: UK
Year: May 2014
Images Courtesy of Brandalism UK