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    The Meeting of Artistic Minds

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    By Grace Weber, @gracewebermusic This item is cross-posted from the blog of the National YoungArts Foundation. On Thursday, June 26, Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen will moderate the latest installment in the YoungArts Salon Series, which is funded by Knight. The conversation will feature dancer-choreographer Justin Peck and singer-songwriter Sufjan...
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    Setting the scene in Charlotte for a lively summer

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    A crowd gathered at Sixth and Tryon for the arrival of the new Buddy Bear statue in front of the main Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library. Photo: Brad Thomas Now that two of Charlotte’s major festivals in the Uptown area have come and gone, many may think the entertainment’s over. But, that’s not the case for the next few months on the north end of Tryon Street. Center City Partners, Discovery Place, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library and Foundation for the Carolinas (creators of a lovely little pocket park in the area) are cooking up a variety of activities for the next several months to animate the public spaces at Sixth and Tryon. Knight Foundation is interested in how cities can create public spaces that allow people of all kinds to mix and mingle and share ideas. That’s why we joined the North Tryon Master Planning team. A yearlong design process will help the city imagine how the half-mile stretch of North Tryon might develop in the future.
  • Article

    The meeting of artistic minds

    Published June 26, 2014 by

    This item is cross-posted from the blog of the National YoungArts Foundation. On Thursday, June 26, Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen will moderate the latest installment in the YoungArts Salon Series, which is funded by Knight. The conversation will feature dancer-choreographer Justin Peck and singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens discussing “The Art of Collaboration.” The event is sold out, but a video of the discussion will be posted later to The YoungArts Blog. There is something that happens when artists at the highest level collaborate. To call it magic would hint at the other worldliness of this meeting of artistic minds, but it wouldn’t come close to capturing just how awe inspiring an artistic collaboration at the highest level can be. Take Lennon and McCartney, two people brought together to create music so beautiful and powerful that it would seem their partnership was created by the universe itself. Or Rogers and Hammerstein, a pairing that singlehandedly (or I guess double-handedly) created the most legendary songs in musical theater. Of course, it’s common for us to see collaborations and partnerships happening inside of individual art forms, musicians to write a song together or dancers to choreograph the piece as a team. But when artists from different disciplines come together for a common cause, the results can take your breath away. This past May, singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens and New York City Ballet dancer and choreographer Justin Peck debuted their original collaboration titled “Everywhere We Go.” As a way to give more audiences a glimpse at the beauty of this work, director Jody Lee Lipes directed a short film depicting part of the piece. I watched this video on a train ride today from Washington DC to New York and it made me feel as if I was floating through the air while my noisy train pummeled along the East Coast. The short film captures this exact “magic” I described above and shows the intense and simple beauty that can come from a filmmaker, a choreographer, and a musician coming together to create something greater than themselves.
  • Article

    Civic media discussion mines what millennials want from the news

    Published June 25, 2014 by

    Tran Ha, a Knight fellow at Stanford University, participates in “Millennials and News.” Trying to pinpoint how millennials consume news is as easy for some news organizations as trying to catch smoke, but opportunities abound to make news an engaging experience and relevant experience for this audience. That was the message from a discussion featuring four media professionals with expertise in curating news for millennials held at the 2014 MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference this week in Cambridge, Mass. The discussion, facilitated by Knight Foundation Journalism Program Associate Chris Sopher, featured Stanford University Knight Fellow Tran Ha, TurboVote co-founder Katy Peters, Mikva Challenge Youth Council Program Director Chris Rudd and Jared Keller, director of programming for .Mic, (formerly PolicyMic). Each panelist explained trends they see in the relationship millenials have with the news and offered their take on making the most of it. Four themes emerged:
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    A new summer music festival for Miami

    Published June 25, 2014 by

    Michael Rossi. In the summer months, classical music festivals usually take place far from South Florida, often in woodsy places like Aspen, Colo., or Marlboro, Vt. That hasn’t stopped people from trying to get some summer concerts going; the Mainly Mozart Festival just wrapped this past...
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    On the Town with the Knight Curatorial Fellow

    Published June 25, 2014 by

    By Elizabeth Shannon, Bass Museum of Art New York, New York! As they say, it’s a wonderful town (although obviously it doesn’t hold a candle to the Magic City). However, when a Knight Curatorial Fellow is tasked with seeing the best of international contemporary art (and Art Basel Miami Beach...
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    The Creative Interventions Tour in Philadelphia: Breaking down stereotypes through art

    Published June 24, 2014 by

    Photo: Philadelphia residents are encouraged to express their feelings for their neighborhood in creative ways by artist Hunter Franks. Credit: Hunter Franks. Hunter Franks, an artist and founder of the Neighborhood Postcard Project and League of Creative Interventionists, is in Philadelphia for three weeks using participatory art to create connections between people and neighborhoods with Knight Foundation support.  Tall, slender houses squeeze one another all the way down the narrow block. Kale and lettuce sprout up from community gardens that used to be vacant lots. Murals fill empty walls with color. Porches transform into public living rooms. You can walk almost anywhere from here. West Philadelphia’s Belmont neighborhood is intimate. I met my neighbor who is fixing up his previously abandoned house, within the first 15 minutes I was there. I say hello to every person I see on their porch because they say hello back. One night, two women yelled and fought outside my window. Today I was asked for my input on relationships by two friends, a man and woman, lightheartedly debating one another on their front stairs. Truth is, I see all of life because it is all there to see. There is something beautiful about that. In the good and the bad, in just seven days, in the fifth largest city in the United States, the Belmont neighborhood already feels like home.    
  • Article

    Knight to expand support for open Internet efforts

    Published June 24, 2014 by

    Knight President Alberto Ibargüen speaking at the Knight-MIT Civic Media Conference. Knight Foundation will deepen its support for an open and accessible Internet in coming months, President Alberto Ibargüen said Monday, after announcing nine winners of a Knight News Challenge dedicated to the topic. In a speech that equated Internet openness with free speech, he urged his audience at the 2014 MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference in Cambridge, Mass., and on Livestream to engage the topic, both by emailing him with ideas about how Knight could advance the issue and giving their views on proposed Federal Communications Commission regulations that could allow different speeds for different types of content on the Internet.
  • Article

    A new season for Ten Thousand Things

    Published June 24, 2014 by

    By Kira Obolensky, Ten Thousand Things Next season, Ten Thousand Things will produce three plays, using what’s become a standard rubric for season planning for this unique organization that brings theater to non-traditional and traditional audiences: a play by Shakespeare in the fall; a musical in the winter; and a...