Ottobre, 2021

Each year we celebrate Black History Month in the United Kingdom through the month of October. It’s a time for learning, reflecting on and celebrating the impact of Black heritage and culture. To support the importance of learning about our shared histories, today we are launching over 80 new stories in collaboration with a range of cultural partners across the UK; from Bristol to Liverpool, Manchester to London.

The Black and British hub on Google Arts & Culture has been created alongside contributing partners, many of whom are coming online for the first time. This includes Bristol Museums, National Museums Liverpool, andFar From the Norm joining our growing collection of cultural institutions to share their stories from across the UK.

From football, to photography, and statues to sound systems

You can discover a range of new, young talents making waves across disciplines from dance, photography and sport. Find out about the community response to the nowiconic mural of Marcus Rashford MBE in Withington, Manchester, or discover more about award-winning choreographer, director and dance artist Botis Seva’s company and seminal production BLKDG. Or get acquainted with a host of stunning creatives like the powerful, colourful photography of artist Tayo Adekunle and the five talents selected by photographer and creative champion Misan Harriman in the second installment of his series Black Lenses Matter.

You’ll find stories covering prominent events in British history like the Empire Windrush and more recent events such as the Colston statue in Bristol. This is in addition to profiles on influential figures such as Carnival pioneer Claudia Jones and broadcaster and poetUna Marson. Why not take a moment to learn about the story of Princess Campbell, a Bristol nurse? Or perhaps explore the garden of Sybil Phoenix OBE, the first Black British woman to receive an MBE?

And if you are suffering from Notting Hill Carnival withdrawals, take a deep dive from your living room into the Mas bands, sound systems and steel bands who make Carnival the vibrant, sonic experience it is today.

There’s so much more to explore on the Black & British hub on Google Arts & Culture from today.

Visit g.co/blackhistoryuk, or download Google Arts & Culture’s Android or iOS app

In May, over 100 content creators, publishers, agencies, and other businesses joined the Google Web Creators team for a virtual workshop on Web Stories. The workshop was designed to teach attendees about media-rich, tappable, web-based Stories so they could create their own. And now, we want to share the information and presentations from that workshop with you!

An introduction to Web Stories

In the workshop’s intro session, Raunak Mahesh from Google’s Global Product Partnerships team covered the basics of Web Stories. He explained how they’re an effective storytelling format for all types of content creators — from large news outlets like USA Today to individual creators like The Tiny Herbivore. He also shared that more people continue to access content on their mobile phones, and that 64% of readers prefer tappable content over scrolling articles.

If you’re like me, you live in a house where each person has their own taste in entertainment. Everyone brings their likes, dislikes and “no WAYs” to the sofa. To keep everyone in the house happy — whether that’s your partner, kids, other family members or roommates — we’re bringing features to Google TV that will make TV a little more tailored for whoever’s sitting on the couch.

When Googler Jo Snyder was 20 years old, she left her family crop farm outside of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, with a backpack, a guitar and a bike. She got on a train, traveled 30 hours to Winnipeg, Manitoba, enrolled in university and later started a punk rock band. She was the first one in her “pretty big, close and liberal Mennonite family” to move away (and is certainly the first punk rocker among them), but the values of her upbringing stayed with her. She still values community, kindness, and, well, food.

Many Mennonites are farmers, and traditionally their diets rely heavily on meat, eggs, dairy and seasonal produce. One recipe book — “The Mennonite Community Cookbook” — has been called the “grandmother” of all Mennonite cookbooks and has taken residence in Mennonite kitchens for generations. First printed in 1950, it’s a collection of 1,400 recipes from Mennonite communities across the U.S. and Canada compiled by its author, Mary Emma Showalter.

Jo’s Grandma Lena, who grew up in Floradale, a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, and was raised an Old Order Mennonite, was one of many to own “The Mennonite Community Cookbook.” After she died, Jo — who has been a vegetarian for 25 years and vegan for the last 10 years — inherited her well-worn copy. In 2018, flipping through the book, she was inspired to make plant-based versions of the recipes her family loved growing up.

“I wanted to remember and pay tribute to my grandmothers but I wanted to do it my way,” Jo says. “I wanted to take the things that are beautiful about a community cookbook with traditional recipes and local food and take it forward into a culture that could be thinking about a different way of eating.”

She spent two years hosting dinner parties and asking for feedback (“Too dry? Too salty? Do you even like it?”). Throughout, she kept a detailed spreadsheet and more than 100 Google Docs containing recipes she constantly tweaked. She shared the Docs with friends and family, asking them to attempt the recipes and see if they worked.

“I think the way I made and tested these recipes embodied the spirit of the book and the Mennonite community in a very important way,” Jo says. “I brought people together around my dinner table — often people I hadn’t seen for a while, or people who didn’t really know each other.”

After three years of testing and refining, “The Vegan Mennonite Kitchen” was published in March this year. Containing more than 80 recipes, including vegan versions of classic dishes like Fried Seitan Chick’n and the simply titled but rather ambitious “Ham,” the book also weaves in stories from her childhood in Southern Ontario.

“Grandma Lena would have been interested to see what I was doing and maybe would have corrected me a little bit,” Jo says, thinking of how her grandmothers would have received her book. “My grandmother Marjorie would have been delighted. She would have been very excited by the idea and flattered to see her recipes shared.”

Want to try one of Jo’s recipes? She suggests trying your hand at an old classic — Dutch Apple Pie.

Jacquelline’s Corner

The pandemic laid bare existing inequalities across gender, race, class and country lines. And at the same time, other disasters — like hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes — continue to affect people globally and strain already tight resources. To have the greatest impact, we rely on strong relationships with nonprofit organizations around the world that are working on disaster preparedness, relief and recovery — like the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and GiveDirectly, that you’ll hear more about below. We learn about their needs and search for where our philanthropic capital — coupled with technology, data and an eye toward equity — can help make the biggest difference.

But we’re also asking ourselves this: what if cities and organizations could predict disasters and be better prepared with resources before they even happen? With a changing climate, we know there’s more to do in advance of crises to mitigate loss of lives and livelihoods. That’s why we’re betting more and more on the role that technologies like AI and machine learning can play in generating the data we need to be better informed and prepared ahead of disasters.

Last year, our grantees provided 6.9 million people around the world with crisis relief support and resources for long term recovery. An additional 2.8 million people were better prepared with resources and supplies, and nearly three-quarters of our grantees are developing tools to improve the availability of information during a crisis. Together, we can ensure that those who are most vulnerable during a crisis are more protected — before, during and after it hits.

In case you missed it 

Kent Walker, Google SVP for Global Affairs, recently announced a $1.5M grant to The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affair’s (UN OCHA) Centre for Humanitarian Data. The grant will go toward supporting their “Anticipatory Action” work that focuses on developing forecasting models to anticipate humanitarian crises and trigger earlier, smarter action before conditions worsen.

Hear from one of our grantees: Center for Disaster Philanthropy

Regine A. Webster is the founding executive director and vice president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), an organization that seeks to strengthen the ability of communities to withstand disasters and recover equitably when they occur. Since 2010, CDP has provided donors with timely and effective strategies to increase their disaster giving impact, and they work to amp up philanthropy’s game when it comes to disaster and humanitarian assistance giving.

In 2005, an easy-to-use, online word processor called Writely launched. A year later, the collaborative writing tool became part of Google, and over time it evolved into Google Docs. Officially launched to the world in 2006, Google Docs is a core part of Google Workspace. It’s also, as of today, 15 years old. But it wasn’t always so obvious how useful — and loved — Docs would become.

Jen Mazzon was part of the original Docs team, or the Google Writely Team as it was then called. “Everyone told us it was crazy to try and give people a way to access their documents from anywhere — not to mention share documents instantly, or collaborate online within their browser,” she wrote in a March 2006 blog post. “But that’s exactly what we did.”

As a much-deserved gift to Docs, here are 15 things about Google Docs that we’re celebrating — from important moments to tips and tricks, there’s a lot to love.

1. In 2010, Docs got its first big update, adding things like the ability to see others editing and writing in shared documents and better importing features.
2. Internally, the Docs team has breakfast-themed names for the widgets you see when you edit in Docs. For instance, the yellow messages up at the top are called “butter,” and the dialogs that pop out from the bottom right corner are called “toasts” because they pop out of a corner just like toast popping out from an upright toaster. The red error message at the top? That’s “ketchup.”
3. When COVID-19 sent students and educators home, we shared ways they could make use of features like offline Docs and real-time commenting to keep learning and collaboration going remotely.
4. Lizzo and Sad13 used Google Docs to write music together, and they let us in on their creative process.
5. There was that time when none other than the Reading Rainbow team designed a book report template for Docs, which you can still use today.
6. Laura Mae Martin, Google’s Chief Productivity Advisor, always knows the best ways to get the most out of Docs. She shares her tips and tricks regularly on her YouTube channel.
7. In 2018, the Docs team came up with an Easter egg: Typing #blackhistorymonth into a Doc would trigger Explore in your doc, with information about Black history and the Black community.

Will Smith recently joined the Fitbit family and made his public commitment to improve every aspect of his health and wellness. The rapper and actor is creating and curating a Fitbit Premium-exclusive collection of whole-health guidance. Six sweat-inducing, endorphin-boosting workouts and mindfulness sessions in the Will Smith: StrongWill curriculum are now available. From room-shaking workouts to smooth stress-relief techniques, Premium members can now virtually work with Will and his trainers to get their minds and bodies strong. And yes, Big Will-isms do abound!

Premium gets a lot more fresh

Fitbit is inviting you to join in prioritizing your holistic health — from physical fitness to better sleep habits and maintaining mental wellness. Will’s own drive to get in the best shape of his life was inspired by a desire to improve his overall wellbeing, and the StrongWill collection focuses on both the physical and mental aspects of strength

As he mentioned on social media, “I spent countless days grazing on snacks and didn’t feel my best physically. I love my body, so I want to get my overall health and wellness back on track. To me, being in the ‘best shape of my life’ really means taking better care of my body.”

No matter where you’re at in your wellness pursuit, the hardest part is getting started. Fitbit and Will are helping Premium users to reach goals with an approachable curriculum that fits into your life, enhances your routine and brings calorie-burning moves, form modifications, guided mindfulness and plenty of jokes from Will to keep the energy levels high.

Get motivated with Will’s trainers and join in a variety of guided sessions, exclusively within Fitbit Premium – no equipment or gym required:

• Bodyweight Strength: Will Smith is no stranger to lifting weights, but sometimes even the Fresh Prince can’t make it to the gym. Join trainer Roz the Diva to learn strength building techniques you can do without much equipment and explore one of Will’s favorite exercises.
• Core Challenge: To achieve the freshest fitness goals, start with your core, since that’s where peak performance is “born and raised.” Join trainer Jahdy to explore Will’s favorite techniques to strengthen, engage and stretch your core.
• Find Your Center: Will Smith always makes this clear: when training your body, it’s just as important to train your mind. Join trainer Faith Hunter on a mindful look inward to hone your mental fitness with deep breathing exercises and meditation.
• Mobility Flow Yoga: Yoga has been key to Will’s fitness success. Follow trainer Hiro Landazuri through a progressive mobility yoga flow to work your dexterity, flexibility and stability. Namaste!
• Let’s Go Cardio!: In this workout, trainer Maya Monza takes you from warmup, through 10 cardio-intensive exercises, to cool down without skipping a beat. Have some water and a towel ready, because elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat is what it’s all about. Like Will says, “Let’s turn this furnace on!”
• Upper Body HIIT: The faster the better: Trainer Bianca G delivers a high-energy, high intensity interval training workout focused on the upper body and core to burn calories, gain endurance and build muscle fast.

While he has been working on his wellness, Will is beginning to wear Fitbit’s newest and most advanced tracker, Charge 5, which complements his regimen, reminds him to keep moving and also helps him to manage stress and his mental wellbeing.