Thank you, Miami. As of last week’s deadline, we received more than 1,000 applications to this year’s Knight Arts Challenge Miami – which shows just how much this city’s arts community has grown both in numbers and creativity.

We started the Knight Arts Challenge as a way to inspire boldness, innovation and creativity. After five years, it’s clear: we live in a community full of talented and passionate people, and you can feel it everywhere. It takes a full range of engagement – from artist to audience, amateur to adventurer – to make art general in a community. Regardless of where you fall in that spectrum, you are integral to the experience of art. What we do as a community, we do together. For the first time this year, too, as a way to fully represent the diversity of our community, we began accepting applications in both Spanish and Kreyol. We got a great response, receiving several dozen applications in these languages (Gracias! Di ou mèsi!), So, what’s next for this year’s applicants? Our panel has begun the initial review process. With so many applications, this process will take some time. We will announce finalists on May 29. Those finalists will submit a more robust proposal, which our panel will then review. The final winners will be announced at a community event on Monday, Dec. 3. Mark your calendars! You can stay up to date on all things Knight Arts related by joining our mailing list at knightarts.org.

By Tatiana Hernandez, arts associate at Knight Foundation