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Guerrilla Gardening Video
By Spraygraphic | April 22, 2008
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/V1HEi_qbbJk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Over the next few months, Adidas and Dazed Magazine will be transforming the urban environment of England with guerrilla gardening. Watch the video to see guerrilla gardening in action.
Topics: Earth Friendly Ideas, Nature and Environment, Political Activists, Sustainable Living, You Tube videos |
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 am
While I commend Adidas’ production of a more ecological trainer their appropriation of guerrilla gardening is disingenious… by which I mean a mish mash of fakery, silliness and confusion which I worry will not actually transform the urban environment of England for the better at all.
The back story to Adidas’ film for example is more compost heap than floral border.
I am a guerrilla gardener and last September Adidas wrote to me asking for my help with their campaign. When they presented their plan to me I advised them not to go ahead with the guerrilla gardening theme for the campaign because it was lacking in authenticity… something I thought Adidas cared about a lot.
I know a lot about guerrilla gardening. Through my website http://www.guerrillagardening.org I have corresponded with and met many guerrilla gardeners around the world. What we all share in common is that at some point we have cultivated someone else’s land without asking for their permission. The land is usually neglected and our cultivation is usually committed gardening. I won’t go into the reasons why we do this here but this global movement has generated a great deal of positive media interest in the last couple of years and perhaps because of this Adidas’s ad agencies in both the UK and Germany approached me directly to help launch their new eco shoes. But this was not to help us continue our work or spread our message but to lend a smidgen of authenticity to an otherwise mischievous and cynical marketing contrivance! They had an eight page short film script of about guerrilla gardening (filled with photographs of me and my gardening lifted off website) and big name director on board to shoot a fake documentary. They said they needed real guerrilla gardeners (under 25 and all wearing Adidas) to be in it to give it an air of authenticity. (To read the script visit (http://www.guerrillagardening.org/adidas_fake_doc.pdf) I suggested this was insufficient authenticity and that guerrilla gardening is too unpredictable to be scripted precisely. Going ahead would be dubious for us and for them… but they went ahead. A couple of weeks ago I noticed their finished film went up on You Tube posted (or ’seeded’ one might say in marketing terms) by “GuerrillaGardener1″. A week later Dazed magazine asked me to promote their competition on my website and proudly shared with me mock ups of their “guerrilla gardening” commissions by artists… who it seems know very little about the realities of guerrilla gardening - they are making temporary flower arrangements (filling a skip with flowers is asking them to be stolen).
If Adidas’s campaign really does encourage people to transform neglected patches of land with plants in a way that enhances the environment then their fake documentary, their silly art commissions and their pushy manners will not matter to me. My concern, and my reason for blabbering on here, is that their big marketing mish-mash makes guerrilla gardening a mish-mash and so confuses those who might otherwise get involved in transforming land for good (whether they wear new trendy eco shoes or traditional rubber wellingtons while they do it).
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Thank you for the insightful commentary on the current issue in guerrilla gardening…I would hope most people would look at these kind of things with critical eye when a large and sometimes small companies are involved. So what can we do to make adidas more responsible for their fake political activism and what about the participants in the video. Are they from groups similar to yours. How do they stand on the issue?
thanks
chuck b.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I was chosen to be one of the faces to front the Adidas commercial and was very excited to be a part of something that I was already passionate about.
I am no actress and have been interested in and written much about “greening” the urban environment for some time.
I saw the campaign as a good way to highlight the issue further and hopefully inspire more young people to take an interest in their local environment. Surely the publicity is good anyway? I just dont see the problem- At least Adidas have taken the step into researching more environmentally sustainable footwear, unlike most other retail outlets.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Thanks for speaking up!!! You feel Richard hasn’t represented you in an accurate light?