In London, dancers of color now have ballet shoes that match their skin tones. Since ballerinas first danced in satin pointe shoes, the color was usually blush pink. Sometimes dancers would alter the color of their shoes using makeup foundation. Now a British manufacturer, Freed of London, has created shoes in a range of hues. The move sends a message of inclusion to dancers of many backgrounds and helps widen the appeal of the art form, dancers say.
In Glasgow, police have been able to cut the crime rate in half by rethinking their strategy. In 2005, the city was dubbed the “murder capital of Europe” by the World Health Organization. Through a combination of approaches, which include treating violence as a public health concern, outreach to gang-involved youth, and helping formerly incarcerated people to find jobs, the city saw its homicide rate drop by 60 percent over the past decade. Cities such as London are taking notice. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has formed a violence reduction unit similar to Glasgow’s, which will emphasize interrupting and preventing violent behavior.
In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a group of young women has founded the Kyrgyz Space Program and are crowdfunding a satellite project. Kyrgyzstan doesn’t have a space program, nor is it a country that’s particularly hospitable to women’s ambitions. The group decided to build and launch a simple cube satellite for the experience and to pave the way for building a more complex apparatus. This isn’t the first time crowdfunding has been used to finance space exploration: A Danish group of amateurs called Copenhagen Suborbitals has built and launched homemade rockets.
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