Adverts on the Tube have been 'hacked' to spread an important message
LONDON -- As commuters boarded the London Underground on Monday morning, they were met with an arresting change from the usual adverts emblazoned on the carriage walls.
The typical ads had been replaced with posters drawing attention to cuts to women's services ahead of the Treasury's publication of its Autumn Statement.
Feminist activism group Sisters Uncut placed nearly 100 posters on Tube adverts across seven Underground lines, including the Jubilee, Victoria, Bakerloo, Piccadilly, Northern, Central and Overground lines.
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Known as "subvertising," the move is intended to act as a form of real-world ad-blocking which repurposes external advertising in order to spread a message.
The posters called on Prime Minister Theresa May to deliver a strategic plan for all domestic violence survivors which will better support Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people, migrants, people with disabilities, and LGBT+ people.
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The ad-blocking came just one day after Sisters Uncut blocked bridges and set off smoke flares to protest the government's pledge to provide £20m of temporary funding for women's refuges for victims of domestic violence fleeing abuse -- a sum they say is insufficient.
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Sisters Uncut released a statement last week stating that the government initiative was akin to "sticking plaster on a haemorrhage" and that the government was failing to secure funding for specialist services.
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"The main thing is that we want the government to provide a secure funding plan that secures money for specialist services rather than temporary tiny pots of cash that anyone can bid for and doesn't guarantee support or safety for domestic violence survivors," a spokesperson for Sisters Uncut told Mashable.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
