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    Surprises of a summer afternoon

    Published June 29, 2014 by

    By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer The promised grand finale of the XXI Mainly Mozart Festival not only met expectations but also surpassed them, and provided pleasant extra surprises that went beyond the strictly musical. It was comforting to attend a chamber music concert at the Arsht...
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    Unlikely artistic duo composes a successful partnership

    Published June 28, 2014 by

    Photo: Justin Peck and Sufjan Stevens with Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen at the National YoungArts Salon. Credit: World Red Eye.   For any artist, working with a colleague can open new doors of creativity, as successful collaboration entails compromise. It is an art in itself, after all, to make it happen. And precisely on “The Art of Collaboration” is what the latest installment in the National YoungArts Foundation’s Salon Series was all about, with a discussion that took place on Thursday evening at the organization’s main campus in downtown Miami.
  • Article

    Unlikely artistic duo composes a successful partnership

    Published June 28, 2014 by

    Photo: Justin Peck and Sufjan Stevens with Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen at the National YoungArts Salon. Credit: World Red Eye. For any artist, working with a colleague can open new doors of creativity, as successful collaboration entails compromise. It is an art in itself, after all, to make it happen. And precisely on “The Art of Collaboration” is what the latest installment in the National YoungArts Foundation’s Salon Series was all about, with a discussion that took place on Thursday evening at the organization’s main campus in downtown Miami. The talk with rising star choreographer and New York City Ballet soloist Justin Peck, and songwriter, singer and musician Sufjan Stevens, was moderated by Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight Foundation.  The foundation provided support to launch the YoungArts Salon Series. The latest fruit of Peck’s and Stevens’ joint efforts debuted this May with “Everywhere We Go,” a 42-minute work danced by New York City Ballet, with choreography by Peck and music by Stevens (his first original orchestral score). Next spring, Peck will have the world premiere of an as-of-yet-untitled piece for Miami City Ballet, with iconic visual artist Shepard Fairey in charge of the set.
  • Article

    Watch Charlotte grow… foot and bicycle traffic

    Published June 27, 2014 by

    Photo: Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park is one of Chicago's treasured public spaces. Credit: Mary Newsom. This article is cross-posted from Charlotte resident Mary Newsom's Naked City Blog. CHICAGO – Can Charlotte ever become an authentically walkable and bikable city? I’ve just spent three days at a conference encouraging cities to overcome obstacles that keep them from achieving that goal. The conference was sponsored by a group called 8-80 Cities. The idea behind that name is that cities should be designed for kids of 8 as well as adults of 80. The first group can’t drive and must walk or bicycle; the 80-year-olds may have already lost or be about to lose the ability to drive from hearing, vision, mental acuity or other age-related factors.  
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    DocumentCloud to expand basic features, add premium service

    Published June 27, 2014 by

    Above: The Documentcloud application helps digest records for journalists. Mark Horvit is executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, which hosts DocumentCloud, and Ted Han is lead developer of DocumentCloud, a 2009 and 2011 Knight News Challenge winner. Working on DocumentCloud has been thrilling and humbling. Hundreds of news organizations on every continent except Antarctica have used the platform to upload just shy of 15 million pages; that’s 1.1 million documents. They are using DocumentCloud to analyze those documents, add comments to provide deeper meaning, and put the material in the hands of the public. And the public is paying attention: Readers have viewed those documents more than 200 million times. What have they been reading? Everything from Sarah Palin’s emails to copies of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling annotated by legal experts. From Wikileaks memos to audits of the local sheriff’s department. From Edward Snowden’s leaked documents to municipal budgets. Quantity isn’t always quality; we’re fortunate to have both.
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    Girls’ Club and Ft. Lauderdale’s night out

    Published June 27, 2014 by

    Installation of “I think it’s in my head” at Girls' Club. Photo by Teodora Dakova Downtown Ft. Lauderdale’s art night (on the last Saturdays of the month) is not called just a walk, but an “artwalk + drive,” suggesting one difference between the more spread out...
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    Points of Light: How nonprofits are using big data

    Published June 27, 2014 by

    Points of light (cc) by James Marvin Phelps. Last week I attended the Points of Light National Conference on Volunteering and Service. Aptly named “Service Unites,” it gathered more than 5,000 leaders from the nonprofit, corporate and civic sectors to learn and help shape the future of volunteerism. These changemakers from across the country were examining how to put civic engagement into action, a mission we live every day at Knight Foundation.    Throughout the conference, many of the topics on measuring impact touched on big data; nonprofits have shown a growing interest in the topic. Earlier this year Knight sponsored a webinar hosted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Data-Driven Strategy in the Social Sector,” which attracted a record number of registrations. Corporations, philanthropies and nonprofits all know big data is out there but how can they leverage it to inform decisions in the social sector? One significant way is through using data to assess the effectiveness of their work or to broaden it into more areas of need.  Here are a few themes related to big data that stood out from the conference:
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    Notes from the Everglades: An AIRIE report

    Published June 27, 2014 by

    By Brenna Dixon, AIRIE I grew up a born-and-raised Floridian, knowing that if it was raining in the front yard, probably my brother and I could play in the back where it would be sunny. I watched half-eaten possums float by in the canal I fished with a childhood friend,...
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    MelanchoLalaland™ update: June 2014

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    By Joey Bargsten, Florida Atlantic University MelanchoLalaland™, our multimedia opera, is in full swing. Here's a few of the lighting/staging sketches we prepared to visually explain the relationship of live performer to screen for the Miami venues we are currently pursuing. The corporate-dystopia environment was built in Maya and Unity,...
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    Startup Grind broadens networks of Miami’s emerging entrepreneurs

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    Watch Startup Grind videos from other cities on YouTube. Knight Foundation supports Startup Grind Miami, part of a global community, to expand South Florida’s network for entrepreneurs. Jason Ibarra is the founder of Startup Grind Miami.  Startup Grind is yet another piece of the puzzle we’ve been assembling for the Miami startup community. In this case, community is not an empty word; our startup scene is driven by people, an individual here, a group there, and it’s our ability to think bigger than most that drives us forward. We believe in Miami because we believe in ourselves. Whether we were born here or chose to move here, we call Miami home and wouldn’t build our businesses anywhere else. It was that belief that led to the creation of Startup Grind Miami. On a recent trip to Tampa, Fla., to spend some time with entrepreneurial friends I met on The StartupBus, I learned about Startup Grind. I couldn’t make it to that month’s Startup Grind Tampa event to see Jonathan Cordeau, founder and CEO of LaunchTrack, speak, but I confidently shrugged my shoulders and said, I’ll catch a Startup Grind event in Miami; we have everything in Miami, so if it’s in Tampa I’ve probably just overlooked the Miami chapter.” Well, a week later I stood corrected; Startup Grind hadn’t made it to Miami and someone needed to step up and lead the launch.
  • Article

    FEAST Miami call for proposals

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    FEAST Miami is a meals-based micro-funding project that hosts pop-up dinners to support emerging artists and arts organizations with small grants. These grants are used by the winning artists to execute their projects that will ultimately have a direct impact on our culture and our economy. I spoke with FEAST...
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    Code Fever, helping South Florida communities ‘get up to code’

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    Above: Co-founder Felecia Hatcher at The LAB Miami. Credit: Carolina Wilson. When South Florida entrepreneur Felecia Hatcher looks at computer code she sees opportunity. That’s why the co-founder of Code Fever has been spending many of her days teaching students to see that HTML, CSS and JavaScript can be important tools in building their futures. Last week she was encouraging a group of about 15 students as part of GenTech, a 10-day business accelerator. The camp was co-sponsored by three organizations supported by Knight Foundation: the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, The LAB Miami and Code Fever, which Hatcher and her husband, Derick Pearson, co-founded in 2013. The nonprofit empowers underprivileged communities by increasing the number of students between the ages of 13 and 21 who code, create technology and become entrepreneurs within their communities. A $75,000 grant from Knight will enable Hatcher and Pearson to expand Code Fever’s work. “There are large disparity numbers when you are talking about tech access and tech innovation, especially in some of our most impoverished communities here in South Florida,” said Hatcher, who is also an author and co-founder of frozen confection company Feverish Ice Cream. “We want to equip the students and the parents with the tools they need to be innovators in their communities.”