In this long read, I have a virtual sit down with Gavin Fernie-Jones, Founder, Re-Action Collective, to share his incredible journey embracing the Citizen Friday campaign.
Can you remember the moment that the concept of Citizen Friday first came into your mind?
Ha, yep. In October last year Rebecca from Tentshare sent a message to our community Discord channel at the Re-Action collective. The message was about building a campaign to challenge Black Friday. My first response was that I couldn’t really be bothered as I already felt Black Friday would collapse and that it is an example of consumerism in the process of eating itself. Which was the wrong reply! At first, I honestly just didn’t want to give the day any headspace. It embodies everything that is wrong with our modern lives.
Later that night at around 3am I was giving a bottle of milk to my youngest boy Kai. At that moment I kind of thought, what do we have to lose running an anti Black Friday campaign? There’s certainly everything to lose if we don’t start demonstrating an alternative.
As one of the stewards of Re-Action my role is to help facilitate action, to connect the dots between people and organisations. I’m generally the ‘YES’ person, so as I sat there in a sleepless state my head started whirring.
The following day I had a chat through my ideas with Heather the co-founder of Re-Action. The ones I’d come up with for a campaign were all a bit rubbish, and Heather posed the question ‘what do we want people to do?’ If there is an alternative to the act of shopping, what would it look like? If not Black Friday, what else.
We knew where to go to answer those questions. The Re-Action Collective was formed after reading the book Citizens written by Jon Alexander.
“ Today, we are living deep inside the Consumer Story, a foundational story of humans as inherently self-interested and competitive. This story has shaped not just individual behaviour but organisational design, economic theory, the role of government, morality — all of culture and society. But this is not as inevitable and inescapable as it feels, for stories do change. Indeed, the Consumer Story has been in place for less than a century. Before this, we lived inside the Subject Story — as in “subjects of the king” — which lasted centuries, casting the majority of us as infant-like and dependent, with just a superior few capable of deciding and leading.
And now? Now the Consumer Story is failing. The Subject Story is resurgent. But at the same time, a new story — the Citizen Story — is taking shape across the world, and in every aspect of society. In the Citizen Story, we see ourselves as the creative, capable, caring creatures we are. We realise that all of us are smarter than any of us. We get involved.”
The answer was that we wanted to see the energy that is piled into Black Friday, used to build the Citizen Story. To help us coalesce and connect, to create spaces for creativity, routes to involvement and a way to demonstrate that we care.
So, we settled on #CitizenFriday – Repair, Share and Get Some Fresh Air.
I can’t put any claim to the great campaign name and slogan, that was all Heather’s work, I just brought a bit of energy to the conversation.
The reason we settled on the slogan of Repair, Share and Get Some Fresh Air, is that we wanted to offer a meaningful alternative to Black Friday. Not to just call it out but to suggest that we could all get involved and try something different.
The act of repairing is a great way to slow down but also a way of rebelling. It is a conscious effort to be part of creating and repairing things in a throw-away society.
Sharing can mean many things, physically swapping things with friends and your community, sharing your time at a workshop or on a group walk, or volunteering.
And getting out in the fresh air is a great way to stimulate your body to produce dopamine. But better than that, being outdoors also makes your body produce serotonin (a hormone associated with happiness, focus and calmness), and oxytocin (the love and connection hormone). In addition to producing these lovely feelings in us, we can also increase our vitamin D levels and reduce our exposure to toxins too. All a great antidote to those urges to shop.
Repair gets the creative juices flowing, sharing is a way to turn up and care within our communities, and getting Fresh Air is not only good for us but a way to rebuild human separation from nature. A key building block towards caring for all living things.
Were there any influences from your childhood, early adulthood that helped to shape it?
Yes, I grew up in the Peak District living in an isolated outdoor centre. With my parents and two brothers. Shopping and consumerism weren’t a thing, we didn’t have access to shops. Life was spent outdoors, when the midges weren’t out in force.
Later in life I ended up living on the edge of a ski resort called Courchevel in the French Alps. Here, everything is available, even more so with the advent of internet shopping and one-click purchases.
I remember my childhood fondly and I now know that I was looking for an excuse to change the way I live. Not to go back, as that’s impossible, but to detach myself from the current system, so that I could begin to demonstrate a different way of living.
The idea of rejecting Black Friday and rejecting mass/mindless consumerism must have hit a nerve with some audiences. what were the positive/negative reactions?
Not really any major negative reactions. I kind of think we all know deep down that there is something very wrong with the way we are living. Black Friday is the pinnacle of the consumer story. The things we purchase do not cost in the external damages, such as those caused by producing and shipping products. Resources will be taken from nature, unreplenished, living things will be mistreated in production, pollution created through shipping. I guess it’s getting harder to deny these things are happening. Some people have likely been able to ignore our message, and the pervasiveness of marketing and advertising makes it difficult to see clearly. But, I think it’s hard to argue these days that we should continue mass/mindless consumerism.
The recent Netflix documentary “Buy Now” is a message of tech and marketing specialists opening their minds to mindless consumerism and the role they played creating it. It really is becoming impossible to ignore our consumer habits and increasingly a harder message to defend. I think any brand that continues to participate in Black Friday will not be treated kindly by history.
As for positive reactions, loads. I think the fact that we’re proposing a meaningful alternative is key. Repairing, sharing, and stepping outside are accessible things to do. We are careful not to brand the campaign, and not to define what citizens should do on a Friday, or for how long. It’s important to do what matters to you and your community.
Several other organisations have now joined the campaign, and even rewritten the slogan to support their mission. That’s fine with us, even celebrated.
On your website you say that the Citizen Friday approach promotes agency, benefits body and soul and limits our impact on the environment. How has that shown up in your own life since doing a weekly Citizen Friday?
Hugely. For the last year each Citizen Friday I’ve been on a very internal and personal journey. I spend much more time outside, and I’ve reevaluated the things that are important to me.
It’s helped me turn up refreshed to my work at Re-Action. Which is a global collective of organisations creating citizen-centred organisations within the outdoor industry. The idea of Re-Action was born out of One Tree at a Time, a community hub I founded in our local French village. Both of these organisations give agency. They provide real options for citizens in communities. Such as repair facilities, workshops for skill sharing, peer-to-peer lending, and access to affordable outdoor gear.
True agency is always collective, and Citizen Friday is playing a role in building collaboration.
Citizen Friday makes me think about what I need in my community to have real choice. It encourages me to think about what is important, and what makes me truly happy. The outcome of doing that weekly, as some kind of ritual, is that I realise that being happy has little to nothing to do with consuming. As a result I have more friends, spend more quality time with my family and community, and feel like I have a new purpose.
Do you feel that you’ve successfully substituted your thirst for consumerism with a thirst for ‘consuming’/engaging with sustainable and nature-centred practices?
Completely. Give me a table to sit round with friends, a workshop to attend, something to repair, or an hour outside. That’s what I want and need. I will admit that I was never the biggest consumer because of my upbringing, but now I am completely free from consumer habits.
How can the #CitizenFriday approach apply to people who are time poor/nature deprived?
I think being time poor is one of the main reasons we’ve disconnected from nature. We seem to always be rushing somewhere and even when we have the opportunity we often rush through nature. Who is more connected to the natural world, someone who sits in a small patch of city woodland listening to the birds, staring at the insect on the ground and watching the trees, or the trail running, skier, or mountaineer that is racing to the top of a peak?
Citizen Friday has made me slow down when I’m outdoors, it’s made me leave my phone at home, and it’s encouraged me to hug trees.
If we shed our urges to consume we’re effectively buying ourselves time. In both a monetary sense and a moments sense. The game at play, which is used to trick us into consuming, is extremely effective. If we refuse to play the game, to think about a citizen led future we become less time poor. I don’t search the internet for the next thing to buy, or spend my time at the shops.
You can take part in #CitizenFriday, even if you’re time poor and nature deprived. To begin with, take some time to sit in a park, repair something whilst watching the TV, maybe see if there’s a local shared allotment, or community space you can volunteer at for an hour. Commit to doing something each Friday for a month to start, even if it’s only 10 mins of laying on a piece of grass. There’s every likelihood that you’ll enjoy yourself and that it will become a bit addictive.
Some people, myself included, feel there’s a lot of focus on individuals to enact change when systems change is really what’s needed. What are your thoughts on this?
I think this system is already in collapse, and therefore the system will change. Cracks are appearing. If that is the case we should be putting energy into reimagining our future. That can begin with the individual, and I think it starts with an internal conversation. Questioning all of the things we have told ourselves, and sitting with questions rather than answers. That has probably been the most profound impact of CitizenFriday on me. Each week I think about what it means to be a citizen not a consumer.
The repair part of Citizen Friday is where I add fuel to my creativity.
Sharing is where I spend my time with my community, getting involved and building collective agency.
And being outdoors is where I find I self reflect the best.
I think system change starts with an internal awakening, building into a collective awakening. It starts with refusing to accept the stories we have told ourselves.
The dominant one of the moment is that success is shown in accumulation of things like, our house, cars, clothes etc. These things don’t count their externalised costs; like emissions, nature depletion and waste, this is a dead end for humanity. Some stats state that 80% of all purchases brought on Black Friday will be disposed of before, or after one use. This consumerism comes with heavy costs. We’re eating away at the very things that give us life, our planetary life support systems for very short lived gratitude.
We need to find new measures of success. For me that’s to do with joy, relationships, time, healthy food and community.
Citizen Friday has led me to realise that we’ve all collectively been living lies, we’re all implicated, and entangled in this system. We are the system. Our stories of progress and the othering, of each other and of the natural world are deeply flawed.
Taking that first step in refusing to accept these stories begins with a single action. Then it builds to collective action as more of us awake.
Realising this can feel daunting. How can I play a role in changing the system if everything I do is entangled within it? To help deal with this I tend to think in stories. I’m a collection of stories, I can write stories, and I can co-write stories.
Citizen Friday helps me break those stories down through contemplation, and then it helps me begin to rewrite a different story.
Stepping out into the natural world is a great way to begin to understand complexity. I’m lucky to have a bit of land which I enjoy spending my time growing fruit and vegetables on, I also allow a chunk of it to rewild. Watching nature achieve a balance in this rewilded section has been an important learning space. Working with the land and nature to grow food is a massive eye opener to complexity.
By repairing stuff, I’ve come to understand more about the resources that go into making something. By not thinking of things as single use, I’ve written a new story about care.
And the sharing part of Citizen Friday has helped me find my people, and to begin to build that collective action. I can change my own story but that will only matter when I begin to write it with others.
Collectively we can write a new story. And that is a big part of the work we need to do at this moment.
That’s why after last year’s Citizen Friday, we decided that rather than act once a year in response to Black Friday, we would do it each Friday.
Do you think a four-day week would help create more room for a participatory, ‘citizen’ mentality?
I think a reduction in working hours as a whole would help. I live in France where many people work a 35-hour week. I think this allows for more space to take on a ‘citizen’ mentality. Our ideas of success are wrapped up in work and busyness. Is it successful to be busy all the time? That’s certainly a very modern concept and value. Our approach to work combined with our consumer values approach is in turn diminishing the very value of humans themselves. To a point where we become independent from each other and nature, competitive, and self serving.
Could you define the word citizen as you understand it?
A citizen is someone that is interdependent, working collectively with others, they get involved, and they participate. A citizen sees themselves as part of a much bigger system, moving from ownership to stewardship, from othering to caring, separation to connection, from arriving with answers to sitting with questions.
The consumer story is great at suggesting we’re independent. Both from each other and nature. From within that story we speak of solutions, and it pitches us against each other in competition, whilst taking resources from nature without financial consequences.
For me, thinking as a citizen, I tend to think about my relationship to all living things, not just my dependence on fellow humans. At the moment I’m feeling a real urge to reconnect with nature even more. It’s a physical sense, like there is something I’m really missing. And that’s where I think the next year of taking part in Citizen Friday will take me. I foresee more time walking barefoot, tree hugging and laying on the forest floor. From those viewpoints I think I’ll shed even more of the stories I’ve told myself.
Can you give an example of how you have enacted each of the following: share, repair and get out in the fresh air?
The time I’ve spent sharing skills in our local screen printing workshops ranks pretty high but, the most memorable sharing this year has been with the family. Citizen Friday is helping me stay more present, it’s really opened my eyes to the value of living in the moment.
I’m always repairing, our community space is funded by reselling outdoor gear waste. We patch over stuff, fix things, and create art. Over the last few years I’ve become much more comfortable on a sewing machine, you can always undo the work you’ve done, and try again.
One hike in the Alps this summer springs to mind. With a group of friends we hiked up to a mountain hut to stay for the night and then the following day continued on to a glacier at an elevation of 3,000m. Sat on the edge of that glacier was really grounding, the size of it made me feel incredibly small. On the way down we came across a herd of bouquetin. Glorious.
The hike was made better by the wonderful company, and the fact that my 3-year-old boy Noah joined us.
Together, Noah and I, have hiked and ski toured through the mountains. Always using a secondhand carry rucksack that someone left at the community hub. It’s an old bag that I’ve repaired and modified to add shade. Sure, there’s probably lighter, ‘better’ more comfortable versions out there but, resources have gone into making this thing, and it is more than sufficient.
That repaired backpack has opened up a whole world of adventure to us, and others. It’s been lent out several times. One time in particular to an Algerian family that were visiting the area. They dropped it back with a jar of fresh dates as a thank you. In many ways the story of that bag embodies what being a citizen means to me, helping each other, repairing and caring to reduce our toll on the planet, opening up ways to participate, and creating a reconnection with nature affordably.
What do you hope Citizen Friday will look like in five years time?
What if Citizen Friday had replaced Black Friday? So in five years time we were all doing something with our community on what was formerly known as
Black Friday. That could be spending time with friends and new connections, sharing skills or even enjoying the great outdoors.
But it’s not a defined thing, it’s an open debate. That’s the thing about Citizen Friday and all the work we do at Re-Action Collective. It’s all about about creating spaces for people to be creative and shape it in their own way. About building containers for community.
That’s how I see Citizen Friday as a space for us to collectively learn and change.
