The Proms at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport suggested "that the Proms was one of several big cultural events that many people did not feel comfortable attending" and advocated an increase in multicultural works and an effort to broaden the audience. Her comments received wide criticism in the musical world and media as being a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Proms, with Gordon Brown even distancing himself from her remarks. In the 2009 season, which ran from 17 July to 12 September 2009, the total number of concerts reached 100 for the first time. The principal anniversary composers
Take Back the Night (organization) and the world. Take Back the Night Foundation's Board members have participated in Take Back the Night marches and events from the 1970s to present day. Early Take Back the Night events include a protest in San Francisco against pornography in 1978. One of the first "Take Back the Night" marches was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in October 1975, after the murder of a microbiologist, Susan Alexander Speeth, who was stabbed to death while walking home alone. "Take Back the Night" was used as the title of a 1977 memorial read by Anne Pride at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh.