The organisation argues that advertising fuels overconsumption, contributing to climate and ecological breakdown, deepening inequalities, harming wellbeing and weakening local resilience.
Through research, campaigning and community organising, Adfree Cities supports a growing network of volunteer-led local groups that campaign against harmful advertising and develop positive alternatives for shared public spaces.
With support from JRCT's Sustainable Future programme, Adfree Cities has strengthened its national advocacy work and expanded support for grassroots campaigns. A £148,800 grant over three years is enabling the organisation to build momentum for policy change at both local and national levels, raising awareness of the role advertising plays in driving consumption, inequality and environmental damage.
Adfree Cities is part of the 'Beyond Consumerism' strand of JRCT's Sustainable Future programme, which seeks to shift culture and behaviour away from consumerism.
In Norwich, volunteers have spent years campaigning for restrictions on harmful advertising. After successfully campaigning for the council to pass a motion restricting advertising for products including gambling, unhealthy food and environmentally damaging goods in 2021, they continue to push for a policy. With political support growing locally, campaigners are now working closely with the council.
Alongside this work, Adblock Norwich, a community-driven initiative consisting of activists,
environmentalists, and artists, successfully challenged the expansion of digital advertising across the city. The group helped block 15 planning applications for advertising screens and, in 2025, developed more than 200 local objections to a proposal for a large digital advertising screen in a city-centre location.
Meanwhile, Adblock Leeds successfully campaigned for a policy restricting high-carbon advertising on council-controlled sites, the policy was implemented in August 2025. And in Bristol, local campaigners are working with the council to strengthen existing advertising policies to include climate-damaging products.
As well as challenging harmful advertising, Adfree Cities supports communities to imagine different uses for public space. In Bristol, local volunteers curate a community arts board on a former commercial billboard site. This year, local residents came together to transform the space with a large paint-by-numbers artwork encouraging people to slow down and to connect with their surroundings and nature.
Projects like this show what public spaces can be when they put communities before commercial interests, whilst encouraging reflection on how advertising shapes culture and perception. Ad Free Cities is working to open space for new ideas and stronger communities.
"Through generating conversations about the problems with, and alternatives to, corporate advertising in public space, local groups are engaging people in a vision for a world beyond consumerism, and showing how we can get there."
Nicola Wilks, Adfree Cities
Adfree Cities continues to support local groups to secure policy change, challenge harmful advertising and create practical alternatives.
By combining grassroots organising with strategic advocacy, the organisation is helping communities take greater control over their shared spaces while contributing to a wider movement for healthier, fairer and more sustainable cities.
As more local authorities begin to consider the impacts of advertising on public health, climate and wellbeing, Adfree Cities hopes to ensure that communities have a stronger voice in deciding what belongs in the spaces they share.