The Story Origins of Citizen Friday

How a question turned into a weekly act of resistance, repair, and reconnection.

Citizen Friday didn’t start with a press release or a big plan. It began with a quiet feeling, the kind that creeps in slowly when the world feels out of step. A sense that perhaps, beneath the noise of sales and urgency, something more human was trying to surface.

It started in a Discord thread. A message from Rebecca at Tentshare:
“What if we did something to challenge Black Friday?”

It was late. One of those small messages that’s easy to scroll past. But something about it stayed.

That question got stuck in my head, later that night, spinning around and around, at 3am whilst feeding my youngest Kai. The next day during a conversation, Heather Davies made a massive contribution.

Instead of just another anti-Black Friday campaign, how about we start asking, what we want to do instead?

Maybe the point wasn’t to fight Black Friday head-on. Maybe it wasn’t about launching another loud campaign. Maybe the most radical thing we could do was to simply put our time, energy, and attention somewhere else, and invite others to do the same.

And that’s where Citizen Friday began, not as a protest, but as an invitation.

A simple weekly rhythm. Every Friday, all year round, we take time to share, repair, and get out into the fresh air.

That ritual has changed us. It’s helped us find each other, swap skills and stories, build reciprocity, and reconnect with nature. Over time, it’s grown from an idea into a practice, from a quiet act of resistance into a joyful habit of care.

And now, at the time of year when the consumer story goes wild with excess, we choose to step into a different kind of wild. A wild new story of togetherness.

What’s Coming: Citizen Friday 2025 - Join us for a weekly Co-creation/plotting call

This is the third year of Citizen Friday, a grassroots, citizen-created campaign that mostly lives in community spaces, workshops, and the outdoors. But this year, we’re thinking bigger.

We have a dream. That Citizen Friday won’t just replace Black Friday in our lives, but that it might one day replace the consumer story itself. On the streets. Across the billboards. In public spaces and public imagination.

And to do that, we need YOU.

This year, we’re making the campaign collective. Crowd-sourced and citizen-led. Which means shaping it together: asking questions, trying ideas, testing messages, and building it in public, as a community.

Register for the 1st call here: Wednesday 21st October - 1-2pm GMT

What might we need?

• Posters for the streets - let’s go guerilla
• Stitch & Hike kits and event guides
• Polls and collective tools to shape the message
• ACTionism film screenings (on Nov 28?)
• Banners, patches, there will be sewing throughout
• Maybe even a party...

We’ll also need time, skills, energy - and yes, funding - to bring this vision to life.

What can you bring?

There are so many ways to get involved, at all levels. You might:

• Share a story
• Host a community event
• Join the debate
• Run a repair session or a local walk
• Help design or paste up posters
• Offer skills in graphics, tech, outreach, or logistics
• Or simply spread the message in your community, workplace or organisation

This isn’t just a protest against consumerism.
It’s a practice of something better.

The Plan (So Far)

Over the next 6 weeks, we’ll shape the campaign together:

• Week 1: Campaign co-creation: What’s the message? What do we need? Posters, stickers, ideas? Expect community polls, open calls, and shared design.
• Week 2: We dig into Repair: as a practical skill and political act.
• Week 3: We explore Sharing, from tool libraries to stories.
• Week 4: We dig into the power of stepping outdoors
• Week 5-6: We build momentum, create resources, and bring the campaign to life.

And then, on November 28th, we gather in our community spaces, our fields and forests, in the fresh air and shared warmth, to mark Citizen Friday - together.

This all started with a quiet question.
And now, it’s become a practice. A movement. A story we’re writing together.

And for the record, this year’s campaign?
You can blame Jon Alexander. He messaged me last week to ask, “Is Citizen Friday happening again?”

And, I took the bait. I'm all in.

Who’s with us? What can you bring? What can we create - together?