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Listen: People Just Do Something with Led by Donkeys and the guerrilla story wars

If there was ever a perfect encapsulation of ‘Just Doing Something’ – it may well be Led By Donkeys, the activists who have made their name with viral political stunts.

People Just Do Something

In 2018, four mates sat in a Stoke Newington pub, bemoaning the political chaos gripping the nation after the Brexit referendum. They doom scrolled through their Twitter feeds, and then they had an idea.

An idea which, some weeks later, would lead them up a ladder on the A10, armed with a bucket of sloppily mixed wallpaper paste, slapping a giant tweet from David Cameron onto a billboard in the dead of night.

The stunt went viral. By the next day, they had 30,000 Twitter followers. Led By Donkeys was born.

The project, which was originally anonymous, was set up use satire to call out lies and hypocrisy over Brexit, but has gone onto target the Conservative government, Donald Trump’s state visit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Most recently, the group have made headlines by lowering banners during speeches by Nigel Farage and Liz Truss – of Vladimir Putin and a lettuce above the words ‘I crashed the economy’ respectively.

If there was ever a perfect encapsulation of ‘Just Doing Something’ – it may well be Led By Donkeys. Join Priyanka and Isaac as Led by Donkeys co-founder Ben Stewart unpacks their journey in the first episode of season 2 of People Just Do Something.

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