This beautiful TikTok challenge honours cultural heritage
POC creators unite in a global celebration that highlights traditional dress, challenging the app's algorithm in the process. Gen Z’s app du jour, TikTok is a hotbed of challenges, dances, and trends. Forever growing in popularity, in recent months the video-sharing platform has gone trans-national and trans-generational, the latest hype...
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Meet Jahkini Bisselink, the loudest Gen Z voice at the UN
This week we’re feeling especially grateful for the voice of young representative and activist Jahkini Bisselink, who’s making sure Gen Z gets a say in what matters most. ‘More than half of the world’s population is under 30’, says then 18-year-old Jahkini Bisselink to a delegation of UN state...
Exclusive – Meet Nyome, the model who changed Instagram’s nudity policy
The social media platform has pledged to do better when it comes to censoring plus-size Black women's bodies, following a campaign from model Nyome Nicholas-Williams. ‘If thin, white models can post nearly-naked photos on Instagram, why can’t I,’ asked plus-size model Nyome Nicholas-Williams (who uses the handle @CurvyNyome) in response...
Gen Z is heeding the call for change as the world stands in solidarity with BLM
Since a national uprising against police brutality went international, Gen Z's teen activists have remained at the forefront of the BLM movement, leading the long overdue call for change. The protests fuelled by George Floyd’s murder on May 25 have gone international. As the world continues to stand in solidarity...
Vogue’s September issue celebrates activism
A 'rallying cry for the future,' the magazine's autumn edition features an army of twenty inspiring activists dedicated to making change. Traditionally the fashion bible’s most important issue of the year, this September sees Vogue put activism front and centre as part of a global effort to spread hope across...
Darcy Bourne is one of many black athletes pushing for change
Martin Luther King III posted an image of Darcy holding a protest sign. It’s one of many efforts by black female athletes to change the conversation around racism and prejudice. Darcy Bourne is an 18-year-old professional hockey player for the Great Britain Elite Development Programme. She went viral in...
The art exhibition striving to destigmatise sex work
'Absence of Evidence' is the collaborative outdoor photography project striving to raise awareness about the conditions of sex work while building a safer future for women involved in prostitution. A collaborative outdoor photography project between artist duo Henry/Bragg and a group of former sex workers known as ‘Untold Stories’ is striving to elevate the voices of women involved in the industry and transform the narratives around how their work is...
How the vapid #challengeaccepted trend shone a light on Turkish femicide
In an interesting reversal of the typical watering down of social media, celebs recently found their attempts at self-promotion co-opted by something actually important. There was a lot of confusion on Instagram recently after a spate of women began posting black and white selfies tagged ‘#challengeaccepted’. The now familiar mix of ubiquity and vagueness, implying exclusivity and inviting further investigation, suggested to Insta users that there was a new...
Coronavirus causes huge growth in demand for trustworthy news
Questionable news sites have seen a drop in clicks while more traditional outlets have enjoyed fresh popularity, though whether it lasts after the pandemic remains to be seen. The Economist has published new figures that show many of us flocked to mainstream news websites from early March onward at the height of the Coronavirus panic, suggesting that demand for less legitimate sites slows down in moments of crisis. These figures...
The climate refugee crisis is at our doorstep
The largest shift in human demographics since people first descended from Africa is currently underway, and we’re not acting like it. The World Bank estimated in 2019 that by 2050, there could be as many as 300 million people displaced due to climate change. To put that in perspective, if these migrants were to form a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world. Despite this, neither...
