Sometimes all people need for a pick-me-up is a little change in scenery, especially on their way to and from work. That’s exactly what London commuters got last week when, instead of walking by ad after ad in the tunnel leading down to the Underground subway station, they were met with tons of cat photos.
The presence of cats was made possible by a creative collective called Glimpse that launched a campaign named Citizens Advertising Takeover Service—CATS, for short—and nearly 700 other people who donated.
Glimpse cites one of its biggest and original motivators is people being tired of being told what to buy through the bombardment of advertisements lining the Underground everyday. Of course, the Underground isn’t the only place where ads are prevalent, as people see them while driving, watching TV, using free apps, and just about anywhere else they look, but the Clapham Common station is a prime area where hordes of people are sure to get relief.
“We tried to imagine a world where public space made you feel good,” Glimpse founder James Turner said in a press release sent to Mashable, adding, “We hope people will enjoy being in the station and maybe think a bit different about the world around them.”
The collective initially came up with the idea of replacing the ads with something beautiful, like pictures of nature or families on vacation, but they reconsidered when they thought about what would become popular on the Internet and Turner said, “Cats were the obvious answer.”
When approached with how they could turn this into a project for good, rather than just to turn off all the noise of advertisements, Glimpse decided to feature photos of cats that were also in need of a home. The collective partnered with Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and Cats Protection to feature photos of stray cats that are looking for homes.
Nearly 700 people donated over $23,000 to a Kickstarter campaign to fund the silly project, and it has a run-time of 2 weeks within the tunnels and on the turnstiles. It’s been up for one week already, so anyone in the area should head over to see it before it’s taken down!
Though cats aren’t for everyone, which is something a lot of non-cat-lovers have been pointing out, the friendly faces are sure to be better for the mental health of people than ads for the new iPhone 7 or for taking out an insurance policy for your house.
What are your thoughts on replacing ads with cats? Please share, like, and comment on this article!
This article (Photos Of Cats Replace Ads In London Subway Station — And They’re All Up For Adoption) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com
