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    Our fleeting piece of paradise

    Published March 2, 2015 by

    "Still Paradise Is Ours 2 (Hurricane)" by Silvia Rivas. "Still, Paradise Is Ours (Igual el paraiso es nuestro)" is such a perfect exhibit for Miami, and not just because of the title. The Argentine artist, Silvia Rivas, whose solo show is up at Diana Lowenstein Gallery,...
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    AnthropoScene: Art in a manufactured era

    Published March 2, 2015 by

    By Felice Grodin, Artists in Residence in Everglades TO BE DETERMINED// An Artful Excavation, 2015, Felice Grodin and Noel Palacios What is it to ‘create’ during the Anthropocene? The new geological age that some hypothesize began over two centuries ago with the burning of fossil fuels,...
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    Kairos co-founder Brian Brackeen reveals ‘Raw Truth’ beyond the idealized view of startups

    Published February 27, 2015 by

    Brian Breslin, founder of the networking and workshop series Refresh Miami, and Brian Brackeen, founder of Kairos, a facial recognition software company that was nominated as one of the Wall Street Journal’s 2013 startups of the year, discuss the ups and downs of launching a startup. Photo by Preston Tesvich. Two years ago, Brian Breslin, founder of the networking and workshop series Refresh Miami, met Brian Brackeen, a Miami-based entrepreneur who frequented the city’s many networking events in search of investment opportunities for his facial recognition software, Kairos.  Today, Brackeen’s startup success has distinguished him as a regular on Miami’s entrepreneur’s speakers circuit. Kairos has received $2 million from investors in Florida and California. At Thursday night’s Refresh Miami event at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, Brackeen offered the not-so-glamorous truths behind the sometimes romanticized view of startups.
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    Advisers gather in Miami to review the Knight Cities Challenge finalists

    Published February 27, 2015 by

    Photo by Jessica Hodder. Nine advisers arrived in Miami this week to help us review the finalists in the first Knight Cities Challenge. One hundred twenty ideas moved forward, with emerging themes that included bringing public life into public spaces; supporting a changing urban economy; building connections between communities; and more. The challenge asked the question, What’s your best idea to make cities more successful? With the help of these civic innovators, community activists, city planners, strategists and designers, we will identify a group of winners. We’ll announce the winners of the Knight Cities Challenge at the end of March. If you are one of those finalists, you can expect to hear from us by mid-March. We may also follow up with several projects individually if we believe it is better suited to another funding option at Knight.
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    Ballet Excel Ohio brings back ‘Snow White’

    Published February 27, 2015 by

    It seems like only a couple of years ago that Ballet Excel Ohio, a Knight Arts grantee, mounted its version of “Snow White,” as commissioned by the company and created by choreographer Laszlo Berdo. So it came as quite a surprise to Mia Klinger, the ballet's artistic director–and me, when...
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    It’s time to roll the dice

    Published February 26, 2015 by

    I entered curious and vaguely intrigued, but reserved about going in. On an uncharacteristically chilly Miami night, I invited my husband to watch “Now Now Oh Now,” an interactive theater experience from Rude Mechs, an Austin-based theater ensemble made up by Robert S. Fisher, Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah, Lana Lesley,...
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    Akron ‘Snow Day’ creates colorful community connections

    Published February 26, 2015 by

    Photo by Megan Louise. Instead of letting the bitter cold and snowy weather trap them inside, the Akron League of Creative Interventionists chose to build their January change-themed event around the snow. Sure, they had to reschedule it twice – once for a storm that dumped five inches of the white stuff and again in anticipation of rain that would have melted it all. But that didn’t deter nearly 20 people from showing up ready to paint inspiring messages in the snow. Each month the group builds an event or events around a theme set by the league’s founder, San-Francisco-based artist Hunter Franks. Knight Foundation provided more than $55,000 for Franks to create similar community connections in four Knight cities: Akron, Detroit, Philadelphia and Macon, Ga. January’s theme was Change. February’s is Strength.
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    To improve civic participation we need transparency

    Published February 26, 2015 by

    Photo by Flickr user Mortimer62.  Chris Gates is the president of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. Below he writes on voter participation and campaign finance disclosure, inspired by the latest News Challenge from Knight Foundation. Knight News Challenge: Elections asks the question, How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections? Winners will share in more than $3 million. Apply at newschallenge.org. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen a steady decline in voter turnout, and a growing feeling of disconnect from the leaders of our government that exists to represent us. This, despite advances in technology that quite literally have put the world at our fingertips. Why is it then, when technology has made it easier than ever to access information, connect with one another, build networks and communicate ideas, that we’re so disengaged from the political process? Rather than engage, more and more people are making an active, and rational, choice to not participate in our political process. The United States has the lowest turnout rate of any industrialized country in the world. Citizens are tuning out and turning away from a system they feel can’t hear them and doesn’t represent them. Are they wrong? Given the state of our political system, who do citizens think their leaders really represent?
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    Teaching residents to walk this way…

    Published February 26, 2015 by

    Photo courtesy of Walk [Your City]. Urban designer Matt Tomasulo is the chief instigator and founder of Walk [Your City], which Knight Foundation supports as part of its efforts to invest in innovators who help cities attract and keep talented people, expand economic opportunity and create a culture of engagement. One rainy night in 2012, I hung 27 guerrilla walking signs in downtown Raleigh, N.C., as an experiment: What happens when we show residents how many minutes away on foot neighborhood destinations are in their communities? Three years later, the Walk [Your City] team and I are working to empower pedestrians nationwide with the creation of a “do-it-yourself” walkability toolkit, supported by Knight Foundation. How did we get from there to here? While in grad school back in 2012, I was studying the barriers to people walking as part of their daily lives. Studies show that the perception of destinations being too far to walk – rather than the reality of distance – was the main barrier. While living in larger cities such as D.C. and Copenhagen, I had noticed that people walked 12 to 18 minutes, multiple times a day, without even thinking about it. Could we influence that perception in other communities in the U.S. that do not have the density of D.C., New York and San Francisco?
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    Civic engagement essential to strengthening democracy

    Published February 25, 2015 by

    Kelly Born is a program officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The original version of this post appeared on the Hewlett Foundation blog. Even before voter turnout hit a 70-year low in 2014, many of us in the democracy reform field were in conversation about whether and how we might improve voter turnout, and civic engagement writ large. This, in part, is why the Hewlett Foundation recently announced that we will be partnering with Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation on a $3 million challenge to identify how we can better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections. A recent post here on Knight Blog elaborates on the goals of this election-focused Knight News Challenge: “We are looking for innovative ideas ranging from new ways that news media and others can inform voters, to making voting easy, efficient and fair, to converting election participation into longer-term civic engagement, on the local, state or national level.”