Photo credit: Flickr user Knight Foundation.

For more than 50 years, Knight Foundation has invested in Charlotte. I’ve lived in the city for most of that time and can quickly identify many of those investments and how they’ve contributed to our city’s vitality.

With our city’s growth have come challenges, of course.

Our newcomers used to cross the state line and often shared our slower, polite Southern ways. Today’s residents come from all over the world and bring with them new perspectives – and new food – that challenge and inspire us. Many here have benefited from increased prosperity, but there’s much work to do to ensure that all have access to economic opportunity.

That’s why I’m excited about Knight working on place to accelerate talent and advance opportunity. We are always on the lookout for complementary projects that link people and ideas together.

We believe that know-how and ideas come from inspired individuals. We will identify and connect them to the civic infrastructure, enriching our community.

In Charlotte, we believe the imagined civic campus in the heart of Uptown could become the city’s new living room, a place where people of all ages from all areas of the city can come together to connect and share ideas. That’s why we are contributing financial and intellectual capital to the North Tryon Master Planning Process. We see the possibility for how this initiative can reshape our community and bring Charlotte residents closer together.

One day the Gold Line streetcar project will produce a physical link between neighborhoods and residents on the east and west sides of the city. Until those physical connections are made, we are helping to develop economic growth and job creation by encouraging those interactions.

We also invest in Social Venture Partners’ social entrepreneurship program. This work spotlights  people working to make Charlotte a better place to live. The visibility these inspired individuals gain often means more support for their work and contributes to increased understanding in the community about where great ideas come from.

We build on earlier work in online connectivity as well. The Knight School of Communication at Queens University continues efforts to increase digital media literacy across the city by partnering with Project LIFT students and their families and the Charlotte Public Library. Access to opportunity in the 21st century requires digital proficiency, and we want to connect residents with these fundamental skills.

We also see the arts as essential to the city’s vibrancy. Our recent investment in North Carolina Dance Theatre – to support innovative new works and to increase the weeks of employment for its dancers – is a signal that we see the creative sector as a driver in Charlotte’s city’s economy. We want to connect new audiences to creative work and to ensure that the company can attract and retain top artistic talent.

I’m grateful to be part of Knight, a national foundation with deep roots in the community I call home. I have access to resources and a national network of ideas that complement the transformations and hard work already taking place in our community.  Charlotteans, with their can-do spirit, can adopt – or adapt – the best of what we see in other places and make our city even more successful. What could be better?

Susan Patterson, Charlotte program director at Knight Foundation