What is the „Berlin Ad-Free“ referendum all about? We’ll find out today during our German-French project week, „Whose streets? Our streets! Questioning advertising in public spaces.“ We’re heading to Friedrichshain to visit the Berlin Ad-Free campaign office and meet with campaign activists. But before that we have a workshop about sexism and rascism in advertising. Here’s a report from one of the participants:
Participants report Day 2: SUNDAY SUNNYDAY
Breakfast
Workshop on systemic oppression in advertising
In ads we can still nowadays see systemic oppressions such as racism, sexism, agism, discrimination in relation with what you earn or your social group. Even it can be very colonialistic.
4 groups – We all pick one or two ads and try to think about how it can reprensent a systemic oppression. Then we had to present them.
The materials and the documentation from the workshop you can find here:
https://vernetzungpartizipation.noblogs.org/post/2026/03/21/material-workshop-sexismus-und-rassismus-in-der-werbung/
Workshop “Art in the public sphere”
After this exercise we had a presentation of “Art in the public sphere”. This presentation was made by Camille. She is a photographer and a designer and she presented her work in London, in Paris. How can art replace Advertisment.
“You are not broken, my love. The system is.”
She showed us action of live art, and told us that this can be a good action because it doesn’t damage what is around.
In some actions we can use pranks and humour, it attracts the attention of people en work well.
Ask yourself this question to prepare the action :
• What do you want to say ?
• Why ?
• What Tecnics?
Lunch
Visit at Berlin Werbefrei
We had lunch and then we went in the city and met Berlin Werbefrei (Fadi et Mario).
Fadi and Mario, Fadi is a loyer, and Mario works also for the association.
They presented us the referendum.
What? Why ? How long ? How ?
First, what ?
They have created a law to reduce the commercial ads in the city, in the public space.
Reduce or delate screens in big streets, reduce the amount and space.
Replace big digital screen by analog screen
On Buses / U – bahn / S – bahn / Trains
Collection of signatures from the 9/01 to the 8/05. Reach 240 000 signatures.
Why ?
Big effect on the people’s brain. The ad pushes you to buy even if you don’t need this thing. It creates inside of you a desire even unconsciously, and makes you buy it. But with global warming we should produce and buy less that is why we should reduce a lot advertisement in our streets.
We cannot decide anymore what we watch, we have ad in our vision field the whole day. And we feel less free of our decision. Pollution advertisement
Very expensive for electricity – 15 000 kwh/y/screen
Lot of energy use – 3 screens, 1 year = the use of energy of 31 person in their daily life, 1 year
Publicers earn a lot – the price is 5000€/day for the big one on renovation site, scale holding.
Disrupt the attention, when the ad is moving our attention is catched 3 or 4 more seconds which can be dangerous while driving. We focus more on digital screens that analog screens.
Light production at night is damaging for people, and for biodiversity.
How long ?
It took a huge time
The adventure began in 2018.
Check if it is ok with the constitution – Locally / regionally / nationally/ EU
It took 8 years from then to now the signatures !
They had at the beginning many people supporting them, following the creation of the referendum but as it took so long, there are now less people. That makes the thing much more complicated.
How?
What can be the solution for that :
No monitor
More diversity = more art, more culture, more space for people and children expressions (today the referendum does not deal with the content but it would be great if the content can change to do not push people to overconsumption.
Not the big ones, reduce size, less digital screens
No ad on the roofs.
Demonstration at Brandenburger Tor
After the meeting we went to Brandenburger Tor. There was a demonstration about a big case of sexism. We wanted to protest and also help Berlin Werbefrei to collect signatures. So this is what a part of the group did ! We collected 126 signatures ! What a cool thing.
More information:
Press release and more pictures from the interventions:
https://vernetzungpartizipation.noblogs.org/post/2026/04/01/franco-german-networking-meeting-on-advertising-culminates-in-public-space-interventions/
More reports from partizipants of „Whose streets? Our streets!“:
https://vernetzungpartizipation.noblogs.org/post/2026/04/03/whose-streets-our-streets-projektwoche-in-berlin/
Youth participation project „Whose streets? Our streets?“:
https://vernetzungpartizipation.noblogs.org/post/category/whose-streets-our-streets/
The event is funded by the European Union as a youth participation project under the Erasmus+ program.
This project is funded by the European Union. The content reflects solely the opinions of the authors. The EU Commission and Youth for Europe are not liable for any consequences arising from its reuse.