The fourth Knight Arts Challenge Miami is officially underway, with nearly 1,300 applications currently being reviewed by KAC readers. Finalists will be announced in April and winners in November. The contest has awarded $17.5 million to fund 78 ideas since 2008. This week, the Miami New Times highlighted the Knight Arts Challenge Miami and one of its key visionaries – Knight Foundation VP/Arts and Miami program director Dennis Scholl. The New Times credits KAC Miami with boosting the city’s “art cred” and spoke to Scholl about the importance of the arts, raising funds and Miami’s current pool of artistic talent. Click here to read the full article and read below for an excerpt. Republished from Miami New Times Why are the arts important in a city like Miami? In a place as diverse as Miami, the arts have low barriers to entry and reach across racial and economic boundaries to bring us together as a community. In a recent Gallup poll commissioned by Knight Foundation called the “Soul of the Community,” social offerings were the number one factor that local Miamians said “attached’ them to their community. Most important of all, the arts nourish our soul. Are there any groups, mediums, or subject areas, you feel are still underrepresented? Miami is an artistic adolescent when compared to communities like Philadelphia and Detroit. Our cultural assets are growing in leaps and bounds, but those cities have a 250 year head start! So it’s going to take us a while to catch up. We’ve seen the visual arts in Miami rise to international prominence in the last decade. If I had to predict what might achieve the same level of excellence in the next decade I’d point to our up-and-coming music scene.