Today, Knight Foundation named the 57 finalists of the 2012 Knight Arts Challenge Miami, offering an array of ideas that will help bring South Florida together through the arts. The group of finalists is made up of individual artists, small artist-led organizations and local cultural groups whose innovative ideas will help push the boundaries of artistic engagement. Their diversity reflects the growth of the community’s artistic talent and speaks to the emergence of a new generation of cultural leaders whose ideas to bring art into people’s everyday lives blend creativity, talent and technology.

This year, for the first time, the community will get to have a say in which projects will receive funding, thanks to a “People’s Choice Award.” In the fall, Knight will select several of the up-and-coming cultural organizations listed below and the public will be able to vote via text message for one to receive an additional $20,000 in support. The full list of finalists and their projects are listed below. The winners of the challenge will be announced in early December in Miami.

2012 marks the fifth year of the Knight Arts Challenge Miami, which has offered $20 million in matching grant money to the best ideas that help weave the arts into the community. The winners of the 2011 Knight Arts Challenge received $2.9 million.

Here is the full list of this year’s finalists:

• 6th Street Dance Studio/WholeProject: To broaden and support the TruSchool Hiphop program for kids by incorporating new forms of dance, writing and cultural events.
• Actors’ Playhouse Productions: To culturally enrich Miami-Dade Schools ninth grade students by making 3,000 seats available to the Tony winning musical In the Heights, coupled with a rap-writing contest
• Ann Kelly: To enhance the capacity of Miami’s local theater community by establishing a cooperative scene shop where artists can collaboratively build sets, store props and share expensive tools
• Art and Culture Center of Hollywood: To share the work of dynamic, national visual artists by hosting an ongoing lecture series
• Arts for Learning/Miami: To provide opportunities for high-school students to pursue their interests in the arts while also learning essential work skills by offering six-week paid summer art internships and apprenticeships
• Bass Museum of Art: To use the arts as a catalyst to promote creative thinking by expanding the popular IDEA@thebass program, which helps bring the classroom to life for young students
• Borscht Corporation: To increase Miami’s leadership role in the indie film community by expanding the Borscht Film Festival to help it become the epicenter of regional filmmaking
• Brazz Dance Theater: To build Miami’s reputation as an emerging center for contemporary dance by creating new works, helping dancers develop professionally and launching a Brazilian dance festival
• Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana Miami: To bring Spanish theater into the community by offering a series of exciting yet short plays to small audiences in a unique venue – a 150-square foot shipping container
• Classical South Florida: To showcase local students’ classical music abilities and talent by having high-schoolers compete to perform live on Classical South Florida Radio
• Coral Gables Cinemateque: To bring high quality, unique and culturally diverse films to the community by increasing programming and educational outreach at the theater
• Coral Morphologic: To put Miami on the map as an eco-arts-tourism-destination by creating an underwater sculpture park installation featuring works by local artists
• Creative City Collaborative DBA Arts Garage: To facilitate an exchange of art and ideas by presenting contemporary musical performances, films and visual art exhibitions at a Palm Beach collaborative
• Cultural Foundation of Broward: To connect local cultural projects to donors by bringing to Broward County power2give.org, which allows cultural organizations to crowd-source funding for specific projects
• Cuqui Beguiristain: To help brand Miami’s Bird Road Art District, an industrial turned artistic neighborhood, by creating a series of conceptual pieces and murals that will serve as both an outdoor exhibit and an art marker to interpret the area
• Dance NOW! Miami: To help bring under-resourced dance productions to the performance stage by providing a venue and marketing help for choreographers and dancers to engage with new audiences
• Deering Estate Foundation: To bring a meaningful cultural dialogue between artists and audiences by supporting a performing art series and a residency opportunity that includes  lectures and master classes at the estate
• Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden: To bring together nature and art by strengthening Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden’s music program under conductor Teddy Abrams
• Florida Grand Opera: To engage new audiences in the opera by simulcasting free performances outside at the New World Center in Miami Beach
• Frank Falestra: To encourage South Florida musicians to produce innovative compositions by giving them the opportunity to perform and network with modern composers at an experimental music event
• FUNDarte, Inc.: To strengthen the local performing arts by providing seed funding for new works for local companies and artists
• General Practice: To promote experimental, cross-disciplinary art by strengthening an artist-run gallery where performance, visual art and music are presented beneath one roof
• Indie Film Club Miami: To build and strengthen Miami’s film community by hosting workshops and guerilla-style screenings and by promoting filmmakers’ work locally and nationally
• Jon Korn: To provide an engaging after-school option for kids by bringing a national model to Miami that turns storefronts into free creative writing centers funded by the sale of local artistic goods
• LAB Miami: To bolster innovation in the arts by bringing together creative professionals and techies for a three-day art hackathon, where they will develop apps and websites that answer one question: how do we enhance the delivery of local art to users?
• Lip Service:  To give a voice to more Miami stories by coaching underrepresented members of the community to present a spoken-word performance about their experiences
• Logic Art Miami: To help local artists show their work nationally and abroad by defraying shipping and crating costs that typically discourage exhibitions outside South Florida
• Miami Children’s Museum: To create a landmark at the gateway of Miami and Miami Beach by installing an educational light sculpture on the entrance wall of the Miami Children’s Museum
• Miami Dade College: To celebrate and preserve the arts and culture of Hialeah – Florida’s fifth largest city – by supporting the opening of the Hialeah Cultural Center
• Miami International Airport: To engage and connect audiences to global and local rhythms by presenting performances of world music to travelers at Miami International Airport
• Miami Light Project: To support emerging artists by creating an artist-in-residence program as part of the annual Here & Now Festival, which commissions and presents local works
• Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs: To celebrate native talent by presenting a Bring it Home Miami series at the South Dade Cultural Center featuring artists from South Florida who have developed national and international reputations
• Milo Fox: To celebrate the art of puppetry by restoring a 1930s-era marionette theater and presenting performances to underserved children in parks, schools and theaters
• The Miami Symphony Orchestra: To help develop South Florida’s musical voice and infuse the symphonic repertoire with new energy by commissioning works through a composer-in-residence program
• [NAME] publications: To promote innovation in the arts by producing books that feature local artists who work across disciplines
• Nancy St. Leger: To introduce new audiences to Haitian dance by creating a professional folkloric ensemble
• O Cinema: To build a sense of community in Wynwood by presenting an outdoor, family-friendly film series that seeks to bring residents together with the people who visit and work in the neighborhood
• Opa-locka Community Development Corporation: To celebrate the art of the African diaspora by producing a multidisciplinary juried arts festival to coincide with a major public art installation in Opa-locka
• Open Lab: To foster the local film scene and build community among filmmakers by creating a monthly gathering where producers screen their films in a variety of locations
• Pablo Malco Foundation: To celebrate South Florida’s vast cultural traditions in a Hip Hop Symphony that combines dance and music in a show for all ages
• Paula Kolek & Neil de la Flor: To promote Miami as a center for LGBT literature by creating a Reading Queer series for writers who create hybrid, genre-bending works
• Performing Arts Center Trust: To provide more exposure for emerging artists by expanding the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Miami Made festival to include all artistic genres
• Pinecrest Gardens: To give local groups the chance to perform in a historic amphitheater by creating the Arts in the Gardens series at Pinecrest Gardens
• Ranjana Warier: To promote cross-cultural understanding by showcasing Indian Classical dances through adaptations of western fairy tales
• Sweat Records: To help make Miami a musical destination by providing a stipend for touring acts to provide free or affordable concerts for an all-ages crowd
• The Artisan Lounge: To strengthen Miami’s visual arts community by creating more low-cost studio and exhibition space for working artists
• The Betsy Hotel: To brand South Florida as a muse for authors by expanding a new writer-in-residence program on Miami Beach to include community outreach events
• The Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida: To cultivate spoken poetry by providing studio space at the historic Lyric Theater and an annual festival for artists who create pieces that highlight life in Overtown
• the end/SPRING BREAK: To experiment with engaging audiences through presenting cutting-edge, thematic, multidisciplinary projects inspired by local ideas, people and issues
• Miami Children’s Initiative: To share local history through the arts by creating the Liberty City Renaissance, a year-round series featuring local African-American artists and culture
• Miami Classical Guitar Society: To expose new audiences to classical guitar by launching an educational outreach program to community centers and schools, culminating in an international competition and festival
• The PlayGround Theatre: To help nurture small performing arts groups by providing them with a small, well-equipped black box theater at discounted rates
• The Project [theatre]: To strengthen Miami’s alternative theater scene by providing funding to develop a new theater company dedicated to innovating and redefining the theatrical experience
• The Rhythm Foundation: To introduce new audiences to Haitian music by expanding the successful, one-year-old Big Night in Little Haiti concert and art series
• Thought Loom: To position South Florida as a hub for dance by pairing South Florida-based choreographers with national and international dance artists for seasonal performances
• Urgent, Inc.: To engage and inspire young artists by having them create murals in Overtown’s historic Dorsey Park commemorate it as the home of South Florida’s Negro League baseball team
• Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays: To accelerate the transformation of Little Havana’s arts district by expanding the scope and programming of the popular monthly cultural festival, Viernes Culturales