• Article

    Miami entrepreneurs to host Cuban counterparts as part of cultural exchange

    Published January 14, 2015 by

      Participants of the first Cuba Entrepreneurial Exchange meet with representatives and fellows of Venture Hive in Miami. Photo by Tomas Bilbao. Tomas Bilbao is executive director of the nonprofit Cuba Study Group. Knight Foundation supports the group’s Cuba Entrepreneurial Exchange Program, which connects entrepreneurs in Cuba and Miami. On a sunny day this past summer, two entrepreneurs met in South Beach to talk about artisanal soaps. They exchanged stories about how they became interested in the soap-making business and discussed their favorite places to buy supplies and how to develop their favorite scents. What makes this seemingly routine meeting between entrepreneurs different is that Ricardo is a Cuban-American with an established soap-making business in Miami and Sandra is one of Cuba’s half a million nascent entrepreneurs and sells her soap out of a storefront in Old Havana.
  • Article

    Citymart expands to U.S. to make procurement more open, agile and resilient

    Published January 14, 2015 by

    An image from Citymart's London Leaders Study Tour on Sustainable Development. Photo by Citymart on Flickr.  Knight Foundation supports Citymart’s U.S. launch to help Knight communities experience a new approach to public procurement. Below, Sascha Haselmayer, founder and CEO of Citymart, writes about the benefits of a more open approach to the procurement process. Take a moment and visit your city’s website. Look up the section on “Problems we plan to solve” or “Submit your proposals here if your solution can deliver a better service at lower cost.” You didn’t find it? Don’t worry; it likely doesn’t exist, and that is just how it works almost everywhere today. That’s a missed opportunity. For several years we’ve been working with cities around the world about how to change that, and new support from Knight Foundation will help broaden this work in the United States.
  • Article

    A long walk through—and around—the global headlines

    Published January 14, 2015 by

    "Walking in Georgia," by Murat Yazar.  Journalist Paul Salopek is retracing the path of early human migration through his Out of Eden Walk, a seven-year project that originated in Ethiopia in 2013 and will conclude 21,000 miles later in South America. Knight Foundation supports the project to develop new forms of digital storytelling and audience engagement. Fast is good. So says the gospel of journalism. To be slow is an insult. An epithet. A flaw. If you are slow, you get scooped. You are left behind. You become irrelevant. You fail. This adoration of speed has only intensified as the Web takes the lead in disseminating news. Click on any news aggregator. Thousands of micro-headlines bloom every day, every hour, across the globe. (As I write this post, there are 19,418 articles available on the terrorism attacks in France on Google News alone.) Media information is exploding partly because, today, anyone with a cellphone is a reporter—or rather, a recorder of current events. (Globally, there are 7 billion mobile devices and connections now in use: one for every bipedal hominid with prehensile thumbs on the planet.) Watching breaking-news headlines churn online is like watching plankton surfacing and sinking ceaselessly, endlessly and in the end incomprehensibly, on a vast yet shallow digital sea. This is why I’m walking across the world.
  • Article

    P. Scott Cunningham on Jai-Alai Books

    Published January 13, 2015 by

    As young boy, my grandmother took me to the smoke-filled betting floors of Dania Jai-Alai. That was more than 30 years ago, and I miss those hazy, teary-eyed hours spent following her around. I haven't been back to Jai-Alai since, but Jai-Alai has, in many ways, come back to me....
  • Article

    Coming soon: The Knight Arts Challenge!

    Published January 13, 2015 by

    Challenge winners DJ Le Spam and the Spam Allstars perform at the South Florida awards ceremony. Photo by Patrick Farrell. If you live in South Florida, Detroit, St. Paul, Minn., or Akron, Ohio, we hope you’re getting those ideas ready. The Knight Arts Challenge will open...
  • Article

    Big bold paintings make a splash

    Published January 13, 2015 by

    Paintings and sculpture from Jacin Giordano opening at Farside Gallery. It will be exciting to see the work of Jacin Giordano return to the walls of Miami. It’s been too long since he moved away and took with him those paintings that never ceased to surprise...
  • Article

    Coming soon: The Knight Arts Challenge!

    Published January 13, 2015 by

    Challenge winners DJ Le Spam and the Spam Allstars perform at the South Florida awards ceremony. Photo by Patrick Farrell. If you live in South Florida, Detroit, St. Paul, Minn., or Akron, Ohio, we hope you’re getting those ideas ready. The Knight Arts Challenge will open in those cities in coming months, and we’ll be looking for the best ideas for the arts. South Florida kicks off the bunch on Jan. 26, with other cities following this spring and summer. We’re excited to share the schedule for submissions 2015: