Crowd Safety: How One Nonprofit Is Improving Training For Event Profs Globally

The Pink Bows Foundation, launched after the Astroworld Festival tragedy, is co-producing training events across the world in partnership with leading safety experts.

On Nov. 5, 2021, 23-year-old Madison Dubiski was one of 10 concertgoers who lost their lives in the Astroworld Festival tragedy. About 50,000 people gathered at NRG Park in Houston to watch rapper Travis Scott perform when chaos ensued from a crowd crush, resulting in 10 deaths and hundreds of injuries. When a pink bow was placed at the stadium following the event, among flowers and candles honoring the victims, it started a movement: #PinkBowsForMadison.

“Madison’s favorite color was pink, and the bows really took a form of their own. People started putting them out in their yards, on their office buildings and on bridges around Houston, and then that grew to supporters on naval bases and across the pond in Europe, the UK and Africa. It was heartwarming,” Brian Dubiski, Madison’s father, told EM. “I think people were appalled that this happened, and we, searching for something at that time to just grab onto, thought about how we could give our daughter a voice that’s been taken away from her. And thus, we came up with the Pink Bows Foundation.”

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