I arrived at the beautiful Exchange building in North Shields to join the bustling and excited queue for the Led by Donkeys: Adventures in Art, Activism and Responsibility talk. This was part of their nationwide tour to promote their new book of the same name. The event was completely sold out and I had several people beforehand asking me if I had any spare tickets. Unfortunately, I did not but there is an online showing of their event in Edinburgh, recorded the night before.
The show started with a screening of Led by Donkeys’ most famous guerrilla campaign stunts including the moment they unfurled a banner reading “I crashed the economy” behind Liz Truss during her pro-Trump speaking tour this summer. It also showed where it all began with their original billboards with lots of references to Brexit, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. Two members of the campaign group, James Sadri and Oliver Knowles, then came on stage to talk about their experiences with the event’s host.
Led by Donkeys
Sadri and Knowles discussed how their group had formed in late 2018 as a response to the chaotic way in which Brexit was being handled. When Nigel Farage came to the North East in 2019 in an insulting nod to the Jarrow March, they too, famously came up to the North East to protest against him. Local groups North East for Europe and Tees4Europe joined in. The campaign group have also placed many of their powerful billboards across the region as they have done up and down the country thanks to successful crowdfunding efforts.
Led by Donkeys then branched out into other pressing political topics including the Tory government’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the PPE scandal and ‘Partygate’, and since then, the inhumanity of housing refugees on the Bibby Stockholm barge and the Rwanda deportation scheme to name just a few.
New and interesting facts where learned during the show and through a reading of their accompanying book. I hadn’t realised that they had been detained by the police for some of their activities, for example, when they painted the London street next to the Russian embassy in the colours Ukrainian flag. To bring things up to date, they discussed how they were going to continue to hold the new government to account – their new video highlights how Labour needs to remember its roots and reinstate the right to peaceful protest. The human rights group Liberty won their case against the way the anti-protest laws were brought in by the previous home secretary Suella Braverman but now the Labour government is tacitly supporting this Tory legislation by appealing this decision.
There were many questions from the audience which they took their time to answer carefully. A common theme was the conversation around protest laws and freedom of speech in this country and these discussions carried on in the bar well after the show had ended.
It was a very engaging night and although there wasn’t enough time celebrate their many stunts, they are all included in the book I purchased afterwards which of course I had signed! Led by Donkeys: Adventures in Art, Activism and Responsibility is a thoroughly recommended read and they continue to tour the UK, ensure you catch an event for a fascinating insight into the use of guerilla campaigning in holding the powerful to account.
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