In January 2011, art student Elissa Erikson’s campaign, dubbed “I want to see something else”, stripped 21 bus shelters of ads all over central Helsinki.

With over €6000 contributed by almost 1500 private individuals, the outdoor advertising space was hired from JCDecaux. Instead of advertising, the bus shelter posters carried the following text: “I want to see something else – 1458 people wanted to free this space of commercial messages.” Also printed were over 1300 wishes detailing what the participants would prefer to see in their urban surroundings. Word about the project spread via Facebook and Twitter and sparked interest in the media.

In the spring of 2011, Kokoro & Moi created the design project ‘Muutakin’ (Something Else), with a series of community-involved events and exhibitions for JCDecaux. The project examined the possible benefits of using the urban environment as a space for permanent interaction with people.

In the first stage, 10 acclaimed designers (Antoine+Manuel, Byggstudio, Hort, James Jarvis, Mario Hugo, Mike Mills, Niessen & de Vries, officeabc, Project Projects, and Rami Niemi) were commissioned to take one of the responses and turn it into a poster. All posters were exhibited on thousands of JCDecaux’s outdoor ad spaces, turning people’s desires into reality.

In the second stage, the general public was invited to create posters, expressing their views as messages in urban spaces. This set of hundreds of unique artworks also spread to JCDecaux’s ad spaces during the autumn of 2011.

Kokoro & Moi is responsible for all aspects of the project from the concept and curation to art direction and design.