We are excited to announce a funding opportunity for the arts in four cities: Charlotte, Macon, Georgia, Philadelphia and San Jose, California. The arts team has spent the last year listening to grantees through workshops and at site visits to determine the most exciting opportunities for the arts are in each of these communities. This […]
Update: Congratulations to the winner of the national contest, @tistheseasontv of Akron, Ohio! See the winning photo, chosen by the participating museums, below. Instagrammers in five cities this week participated in the #InsideOutUSA photo contest, taking creative photos highlighting the national program that brings high-quality replicas of the art in museum’s collections into neighborhoods. Today, […]
Ryan O’Connor is interim executive director for 8 80 Cities, a nonprofit dedicated to making cities more livable. Twenty creative urbanists will join the 2017 Emerging City Champions fellowship program, an initiative of 8 80 Cities funded by Knight Foundation. Now in its third year, the program empowers young leaders to experiment with new solutions to urgent […]
Congratulations to the 33 winners of the 2017 Knight Cities Challenge. This is Knight Foundation’s third year running the challenge in our 26 communities. Each year we have posed a simple question: “What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?” The rules are simple and so is the application process. We want to encourage […]
The June 16 deadline for arts funding in Macon, Georgia, San Jose, California, Philadelphia and Charlotte is fast approaching. I’ve loved hearing from potential grantees over the past two weeks during the open office hours and have received lots of great proposals across the four cities. We’re excited to read the applications. Through my conversations […]
Run an image search for “poet” and you’ll get a lot of variations on white men dressed like either beatniks or old English nobles, most of them holding a page at arm’s length with wide-open mouths captured mid-elocution. The average person probably understands that this is a rather reductive stereotype, but the fact remains that […]
Today we are announcing $1.87 million in support to 12 art museums to explore new ways technology can connect people to art. These days, technology and digital communications permeate almost every corner of our lives, from the time we scroll through the morning’s newsfeed until we set an alarm on our phone to wake up […]
Art critic JJ Charlesworth recently shared a sentiment that caught my attention, one I believe is important to any artist who works in and for their community: “If art’s engagement with society is to mean something credible, it’s time to have a conversation – to speak, and to listen.” He was commenting on what […]
Today, we are announcing new funding for the arts in Charlotte, which will bring exciting experiences to neighborhoods around the city. If it were up to me, though, I’d declare 2017 to be the year of the individual artist in Charlotte. A strong arts ecosystem cannot exist without cultural institutions and engaged audiences. They also […]
In June, Knight Foundation sent a cohort of U.S. librarians from institutions around the country to the Next Library Conference, an annual gathering held in Aarhus, Denmark that brings together library leaders from around the world to discuss innovative programs, services and ideas in the field. 20 U.S. librarians from 11 cities joined hundreds of colleagues who attended […]
Several funding opportunities are open in March and April 2017 at Knight Foundation. We look for ideas that align with our mission of supporting informed and engaged communities, and embrace those that stretch the definition of what that means. Knight Community Information Lab. This opportunity is specifically for community and place-based foundations that want to […]
We didn’t know what to expect when we launched our third Knight Cities Challenge last fall. The response in the first two years was phenomenal; from a total pool of more than 12,000 applications we have named fewer than 70 winning projects. We wondered if civic innovators would bring that same enthusiasm to this round. […]
In an era of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and ever-evolving media platforms, the biggest lesson for the future of journalism is that it’s time to get back to basics. Dial up Journalism 101. Ask better questions. Listen—are you ready for this—70 percent of the time. These aren’t the musings of Luddites but strategies for news […]
On Saturday night in Nashville, a Knight-produced documentary on a Wynton Marsalis performance in Charlotte, N.C., won a Midsouth Emmy in the arts category. The film tells the story of a performance of a new work composed by Marsalis and performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and a 70-member gospel choir. The event […]
Above: Charlotte Living Room Project by Varian Shrum, a 2015 Emerging City Champion. Credit: Mert Jones. Ryan O’Connor is project manager for 8 80 Cities, a nonprofit dedicated to making cities more livable. Knight Foundation and 8 80 Cities have selected 20 civic innovators to participate in the 2016 Emerging City Champions fellowship program. The […]