• Article

    The new day of the residency

    Published June 21, 2014 by

    From Suzanne McClelland's 'ideal proportions' series. Wasn’t so long ago it seems that when artists talked about residencies, it was about far-flung places. Today, Miami has numerous possibilities for both local and national artists to spend some quality time delving into their craft. To name just...
  • Article

    Ordway Summer Dance – Thursday, June 19, 2014

    Published June 20, 2014 by

    By Renee Prola, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts There was a mantra going around earlier today…Rain, Rain Go Away! Unfortunatley, for the first Ordway Summer Dance of the 2014 season the rain continued. The festivities were moved inside to the Marzitelli Foyer at the Ordway. The Foyer provided a...
  • Article

    Spark Camp expands model of connecting innovators

    Published June 20, 2014 by

    Photo: Matt Thompson and Amy Webb at Spark Camp. Credit: Amy Webb. A little more than three years ago we hosted our first “Spark Camp,” then an experimental gathering for journalists funded in part by Knight Foundation. Related Press Release  "Spark Camp to launch more events, create stronger partnerships, promote innovation in media and technology" -- June 20, 2014 Now, thanks to new funding of $250,000 from Knight, we’re branching out beyond Spark Camp with the launch of Spark Co—a new kind of creative organization not quite-think tank, not quite-IDEO but with a clear and focused ambition all the same. The new effort will expand and complement the work we’ve been doing since 2010. This all began because we wanted to convene our colleagues in a more productive and, frankly, fun way, than what we had seen at industry conferences. Our favorite events, such as NewsFoo and Hacks/Hackers, stood out simply because they had tweaked the conventional conference format. The participants in NewsFoo set the agenda. Hacks/Hackers designed its events to facilitate relationships between journalists who code and those who don’t. As journalists we’re trained to edit. Why not, then, follow the lead of NewsFoo and Hacks/Hackers and edit the rote, largely mass-manufactured format that now dominates?
  • Article

    Public Pool goes “Banana!”

    Published June 20, 2014 by

    The art of banana splits vs. the art of "Banana!" Currently on-tap over at Public Pool art space in Hamtramck, a fun and free-wheeling group show that employs, as its theme, one of society’s most compelling and universal symbols: the banana. A staple of comedy and...
  • Article

    MIT-Knight conference explores ‘The Open Internet… and Everything After’

    Published June 20, 2014 by

    The Center for Civic Media is part of the MIT Media Lab. The Internet has become an essential part of everyday life, but it’s changed dramatically since the early days, constantly evolving. What’s next? That will be on the minds of the crowd gathering in Cambridge, Mass., June 22-24 for the 2014 MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference on “The Open Internet… and Everything After.” The three-day conference brings together a wide range of participants, including from the MIT Center for Civic Media and Knight Foundation, to discuss new ideas, technologies and business approaches related to keeping the Internet open. During the conference, Knight President Alberto Ibargüen will announce the winners of the first News Challenge of 2014 on Monday, June 23 at 10:45 a.m. ET. His remarks will be followed by brief talks from the winners, who will share how their projects will strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation. Michael Maness, Knight’s vice president of journalism and media innovation, will also be on hand to talk about Knight’s Prototype Fund, which takes early-stage information projects from idea to demo.
  • Article

    In Philly, an evolving art show attracts attention of rail riders with splashes of color

    Published June 20, 2014 by

    This article is cross-posted from KnightArts.org. Photos by Steve Weinik for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. More pics on Flickr. The railroad corridor between New York’s Penn Station and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station is well traveled with some 34,000 passengers daily. Typically there’s not much to look at, and riders sit immersed in laptops, newspapers or naps. But a striking new addition to the landscape is giving them a good reason to glance out the window: Intermingled with the graffiti, junk heaps and weedy slopes is a sequence of seven “murals,” together titled “psychylustro,” by the German artist Katharina Grosse. Vibrant orange intercut with white diagonal stripes covers the facade of a multistory building, while a shocking pink coats a tattered fence, bare trees and even the grassy ground of a hill. Another section of earth is saturated with a distinctly unnatural green. The overall effect is as if Mark Rothko had gone on an outdoor acid trip while toting a giant spray gun filled with Day-Glo paint.
  • Article

    Livable cities are becoming a science, but civic engagement is still an art

    Published June 19, 2014 by

    Photos by Emily Munroe, 8-80 Cities. What do bike lanes and parklets have to do with supporting informed and engaged communities, Knight Foundation’s mission? Plenty, it was clear from the “8-80 Cities Forum: The Doable City” held this week in Chicago, attended by civic innovators from 19 communities where John S. and James L. Knight once owned newspapers. “The Doable City” was a cornucopia of strategy and tactics to make cities more livable, through walking, biking and green spaces. Those tactics attract talent to cities, create economic opportunity and keep metro areas from collapsing under the weight of cars commuting from ever-expanding suburbs. Community engagement, though, is the thread that runs through the livable city and weaves into Knight strategy. People mobilize their neighborhoods for innovations that make cities more livable. Enlightened city governments find innovative ways of consulting their citizens. And there are signs that community engagement in livable cities is producing an innovative new generation of engaged community leaders and citizens, the foundation of a healthy democracy.
  • Article

    OpenNews: Building New Communities with the New York Times and the Washington Post

    Published June 19, 2014 by

    Cross-posted from Dan Sinker's blog. Photo: Newsroom of The New York Times via Wikimedia Commons. Community is at the core of what we do at Knight-Mozilla OpenNews—helping to build and strengthen the community of people writing code in journalism. And community is a big part of what has made Mozilla successful—the global community of contributors that has helped to build the Firefox web browser. Community is also at the core of journalism: whether it’s geographic communities that form the bedrock of local news or the communities of interest that form around subjects as broad as basketball and politics, journalism has always had community at its core. Which is why it’s exciting to announce that today, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are joining forces to create a next-generation community platform for journalism. The web offers all sorts of new and exciting ways of engaging with communities far beyond the ubiquitous (and often terrible) comments sections at the bottom of articles. We’re looking forward to writing code together to enable them.