about
Registration for invited participants is now open for Knight Foundation’s first Civic Innovation in Action Studio. By attending, you will help us develop a set of investment-worthy experiments that will be piloted in communities.
Knight is a national foundation with deep local roots. We work in 26 communities with the belief that informed and engaged communities are essential to a health democracy. The Studio is designed to help explore our evolving Community and National Initiatives strategy, which nurtures, advances and promotes civic innovations that accelerate talent, opportunity and robust engagement to create successful communities.
Our portfolio supports that success through investments that attract, retain and harness talent, expand opportunity by increasing entrepreneurship and economic mobility, and build places that bring people from diverse social and economic backgrounds together and accelerate the growth of ideas.
In the Studio, we’ll organize you and about 75 participants – a mix of researchers, designers and urban practitioners – around the following frontier questions:
1) Harnessing Talent:
What are the programs, platforms and policies needed to harness talent and expand opportunity in an economy with a workforce that is increasingly fluid and independent?
2) Advancing Opportunity:
How can the design and programming of places accelerate economic opportunity?
3) Robust Engagement:
How can robust acts of citizenship be made “general”?
The goal of the Studio is to identify potential change levers and conceptualize experiments for each question based on insights from research and experience transfer by participants. The Studio will primarily consist of a series of working sessions facilitated by design teams.
1) Harnessing Talent:
What are the programs, platforms and policies needed to harness talent and expand opportunity in an economy with a workforce that is increasingly fluid and independent?
Self-employment as a share of total jobs has more than doubled since 1970. Today there is more than one self-employed person for every five wage and salary workers. We want to understand the role cities can play in harnessing talent and expanding opportunity during this economic transition.
2) Advancing Opportunity:
How can the design and programming of places accelerate economic opportunity? What are the best levers (policies, practices, projects) to make place an accelerator of economic opportunity in a one- to three-year time frame?
Research shows that communities that are residentially segregated by income are particularly likely to have low rates of upward economic mobility. Given this, we want to invest in a set of experiments that can test ways to make place an accelerator of economic opportunity in the near term.
3) Robust Engagement:
How can robust acts of citizenship be made “general”? How can these acts be the default, rather than the exception?
Given our belief that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged, we want to invest in practices, tools and systems that catalyze acts of citizenship and make them pervasive in our communities.
schedule
The Studio begins with an evening reception on May 12 and concludes by 3 p.m. on May 14.
View the schedule
participants
Harnessing Talent
Stonly Baptiste
Urban.Us
Benjamin de la Pena
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
David Blake
Degreed
Bryan Boyer
Makeshift Society
Javiel Lopez
ADP
Ben Broehm
ManpowerGroup
Térèse Coudreaut Curiel
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Alberto Escarlate
Collaborative Fund
Matt Haggman
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Virginia Hamilton
U.S. Department of Labor
Corinne Hill
Chattanooga Public Library
Shaila Ittycheria
Enstitute
Steven Johnson
PBS/Riverhead Books
Les Krieger
Assessment Technologies Group
Paul Levy
Center City District
Pamela Lewis
The New Economy Initiative
Dana Mauriello
Etsy
Cheryl Myers
Charlotte Center City Partners
Maryanna Rogers
The Tech Museum of Innovation
Tom Root
Maker Works
Sarah Rosen Wartell
Urban Institute
Whitney Smith
The Joyce Foundation
Julia Taylor
Greater Milwaukee Committee
Mihailo Temali
Neighborhood Development Center
Stefaan Verhulst
The Gov Lab @ NYU
Katherine von Jan
Salesforce
Kim Walesh
City of San Jose
Advancing Opportunity
Nancy Biberman
WHEDco
Omar Blaik
U3 Advisors
Brian Collier
Foundation For The Carolinas
Joe Cortright
Impresa, Inc.
Teddy Cruz
University of California, San Diego / Civic Innovation Lab, City of San Diego
Deborah Cullinan
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Manny Diaz
Lydecker Diaz
Andrés Duany
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
John Elkington
Elkington Real Estate Group
Randall Fogelman
Eastern Market Corporation
Hunter Franks
League of Creative Interventionists
Colvin W. Grannum
Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation
Toni Griffin
J. Max Bond Center, City College of New York
Josh Kirschenbaum
PolicyLink
Deborah Marton
New York Restoration Project
Alex Morrison
Macon Bibb County Urban Development Authority
Gil Penalosa
8-80 Cities
Jeff Risom
Gehl Studio - A Gehl Architects Company
Lizzi Ross
Dialog Projects
Carol Coletta
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Jorge Martinez
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Jonathan Sage-Martinson
Central Corridor Funders Collaborative
Katie Swenson
Enterprise Community Partners
Egon Terplan
SPUR
Harriet Tregoning
U.S. Housing and Urban Development
Molly Turner
Airbnb
Claire Weisz
WXY architecture + urban design
Darryl Young
The Summit Foundation
Robust Engagement
Rachel Abrams
Turnstone Consulting LLC
Jill Blair
Ford Foundation
David Bornstein
Solutions Journalism Network
Catherine Bracy
Code for America
Kate Catherall
270 Strategies
Sheila Cockrel
Crossroads Consulting
The Honorable Chris Coleman
City of Saint Paul, Minnesota
Kimberly Driggins
DC Office of Planning
Seth Flaxman
TurboVote
Fonna Forman
University of California, San Diego / Civic Innovation Lab, City of San Diego
Joanna Frank
Center for Active Design
Eric Gordon
Engagement Game Lab, Emerson College
Danny Harris
StorySocial
Wade A. Hinton
City of Chattanooga
Nigel Jacob
Boston New Urban Mechanics
Tony Jimenez
Roots of Hope
Helen Davis Johnson
The Kresge Foundation
Peter MacLeod
MASS LBP
Rod Massey
iCitizen
Josh McManus
Little Things Labs
Sara Moran
Free Library of Philadelphia
Patty Morrissey
Groupon
Alberto Ibargüen
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
George Abbott
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Heather Pendergast
College Hill Alliance
Jason Roberts
Team Better Block
Mary Rowe
Municipal Art Society of New York
Regina Schwartz
voter mobilization
Ethan Seltzer
Portland State University
Susan Vogelsang
The Akron Neighborhood Trust
registration
Location & Lodging:
Conrad Miami, 1395 Brickell Ave., Miami, FL 33131
Registration:
Cost:
Knight Foundation will cover all event and reasonable travel costs for your participation.
Questions:
For logistics, please contact
Shreya Parekh at [email protected]. For content and programming, please contact Bridget Marquis at [email protected].
