• Article

    Major collections making moves

    Published March 24, 2015 by

    Dana Schutz, "Historical Reenactment With Plants." The more South Florida’s art scene grows, the smaller geographically it seems to get. It wasn’t so long ago that traveling across county lines seemed like a bridge too far in order to see an art show. Now, from Boca...
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    Philly literary groups boost young poets and other writers

    Published March 24, 2015 by

    Mighty Writers, the Philly Youth Poetry Movement and the Philly Pigeon Poetry Slam are helping to keep the Philadelphia literary arts scene thriving while building a future generation of writers. With support from Knight Foundation, the organizations provide a platform that helps individuals to flourish—whether it’s helping them determine a career path or use their artistic expression to advocate for social change. “I’ve been coming for almost four years and have developed a sense of poetic creativity that I never had before,” says Philadelphia seventh-grader Serenity Baruzzini about the Mighty Writers program. She credits Mighty Writers for helping her to get published in the children’s publication Philadelphia Stories Jr. and for a public speaking experience at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In a city that has a history of producing giants such as the late journalist Ed Bradley and poet Sonia Sanchez, a Philly transplant, Baruzzini is in the “write” place.
  • Article

    Donate your body to science – without having to die

    Published March 24, 2015 by

    The Open Humans founders used the video above to win a $500,000 grant in the Knight News Challenge / Health. Jason Bobe is project director of Open Humans Network, a winner of Knight News Challenge: Health. How many health research studies are you actively engaged in right now? If you are like most Americans, the answer is probably “zero.” At the same time, there is broad public support for basic science and health research. Why the gap? The failure to inspire broad participation in research is something that ultimately impacts us all, and slows the pace of medical progress. Regardless of your past engagement in research (or lack thereof), I hope you will check out a new project we launched today called the “Open Humans Network” at openhumans.org. Open Humans connects research studies from Harvard University, New York University and the University of California, San Diego. Co-founded by me and Madeleine Ball, Ph.D., the Open Humans Network was a winner in Knight News Challenge: Health. We have also received support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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    Open Humans helps people use their medical data for the common good

    Published March 24, 2015 by

    Lead Investigator Madeleine Ball talks about the Open Humans Network. Today Open Humans launches its online network to connect people like you and me with research studies at Harvard, New York University and the University of California, San Diego. Open Humans was one of the winners of the 2013 Knight News Challenge on health data, which was also funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation. We asked the question, “How can we harness data and information for the health of communities?” and Open Humans won with the idea of building an online portal to connect people willing to share their personal health information with medical researchers, potentially leading to medical breakthroughs. At Knight Foundation we’re interested in the ways in which we can use new technologies and behaviors to be better informed. We see information about our health as an important aspect of that. It’s why we were grateful to see the revamped The Wait We Carry site launch last week, an effort by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to make transparent the challenges veterans face receiving health care and other benefits. Similarly, we see Open Humans as an important experiment in reimagining how individuals might pool our personal data for the greater good of all.
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    New leader of TechTown Detroit seeks to accelerate entrepreneurship

    Published March 23, 2015 by

    Ned Staebler, the new president and CEO of TechTown Detroit, wants to accelerate the working relationship between the business incubator/innovation hub and Wayne State University, which cofounded TechTown 15 years ago. A better collaboration between the two organizations will put TechTown on a stronger financial footing and help it expand its mission of helping create and grow Detroit businesses, he said. While TechTown received initial funding from Wayne State, it has operated largely independent of the university. “TechTown has helped new businesses create 1,100 jobs in recent years and Wayne State has a $2.6 billion impact on Southeast Michigan,” said Staebler, who assumed his new role on March 9. “Those two engines together will really fire on all cylinders.”
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    What ‘Attitude’: Winnipeg meets Miami

    Published March 23, 2015 by

    Andrew Ligon's painted and plastered ponies. There are many and varied creatures crawling around the ArtCenter South Florida. Well, okay, they are not crawling, but standing and hanging and buzzing on screen. “Attitudes in Latitudes: The Northern Wild Explores the Tropics” was born out of an...
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    ‘Tribe’ opens On.Stage

    Published March 23, 2015 by

    I get nervous when I hear the word tribe. Division and separateness come to mind and I detest those things. However, when we integrate disconnected and separate communities, or tribes, to create a greater community, that piques my interest. "Tribe," a new performance work created by Bistoury Physical Theatre, narrates...
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    A rich library of African-American poetry goes digital

    Published March 23, 2015 by

    The Knight Arts Challenge Detroit is now accepting applications for the best local ideas for the arts. Here, writer Julie Edgar catches up with past winner Broadside Press. Amid the social upheaval of the 1960s, when protests were brutally quashed, Detroit’s Broadside Press was quietly turning out the works of African-American poets who were telling universal and particular truths that re-shaped the way people thought of themselves and each other. Lots of works, in fact. The good thing is that they’re safely archived in two university libraries, recognized as an important historic and artistic record of the culture’s most astute observers. They include works by poets like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight and Sonia Sanchez. Less well-known poets, like Margaret Walker and Dudley Randall, the founder of Broadside 50 years ago, are a part of the collection too.
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    SPCO on Tour: Three days in Berkeley

    Published March 20, 2015 by

    By Stephen Sokolouski, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra This week, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is heading west to the Bay Area for a three-day residency at Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. The SPCO will be the first chamber orchestra to participate in this program, joining the...
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    Alchemy helps young black men with ‘Finding the Gold Within’

    Published March 20, 2015 by

    This post has been updated. In the documentary “Finding the Gold Within,” about 25 young African-American men sit in chairs arranged in a circle, each one with an African drum in front of them. Between the rhythmic drumming and the storyteller's narration, they each talk about their college experiences with friends they’ve had since they were in the sixth grade.  These graduates of Alchemy Inc., a nonprofit that focuses on mentoring young men of color and helping them discover the “gold” within, have spent years learning to share their feelings and rise above society’s low expectations of them. In the 90-minute documentary, which debuts in Akron tonight as part of the Cleveland International Film Festival, they return to the circle – their anchor. Alchemy’s founder Kwame Scruggs pauses the storytelling in the circle to ask a question, “How does society see you?” One young man answers, “If somebody doesn't know me, they see me as their definition of the typical black urban male.”
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    New York theater chooses Detroit’s Mosaic for Shakespeare production

    Published March 20, 2015 by

    Mosaic Theatre members do a read-through of The Tempest. Photo by Julie Edgar. Staging Shakespeare is a challenge for the most serious of thespians, but somehow you know the teenagers of the Mosaic Youth Theatre in Detroit are going to nail it.  Quip by quip, observation by observation, the young actors showed their considerable chops during a lively, sometimes noisy, read-through on a recent night. Their guest – Lear deBessonet (yes, Lear) – came in from New York for a day to offer her interpretation of a musical adaptation of “The Tempest,” which she crafted and directed for the PUBLIC WORKS theatre, an arm of New York’s acclaimed Public Theater. A low-key presence in jeans and a ponytail, deBessonet, was there to get the actors thinking about how they will stage Shakespeare’s tragicomedy in May. Mosaic was chosen as the first company outside of New York to stage the PUBLIC WORKS production.