大象传媒

Lucy Ash travels across Europe to meet the continent's next generation, as they face a future where the recent certainties - the euro, comfortable growth, ever closer union - have been brought into question. She explores the challenges they face and the innovative ways they are meeting them.

Programme 3: The Picnic Protesters

Leila Chaibi was fed up with paying more and more for basic food in her local supermarket. So she invented what she describes as a new kind of political action. She organises flash mobs to take food off the shelves, unwrap it and invite shoppers to dine with them, in the supermarket itself. Leila and her friends claim they are using an old French law that allows customers to try food before buying it. So far they have escaped arrest and being charged with criminal damage or theft.

Her group "L'Appel et la Pioche" (a pun on "the pick and shovel", spelled as if to say "the appeal" and shovel) campaigns against global capitalism, consumerism, bank bail-outs, poor housing, expensive food, what they consider high profit margins and the fact that many French youth of today are worse off than their parents.

Lucy also visits a couple of socially conscious, cut-price restaurants. One of them helps train young people who have been in trouble with the law. Another is both a cheap place to eat and a place where local charities can come to cook and do some fund-raising.

Producer: Arlene Gregorius.