• Article

    Urban planning experts help envision a better Charlotte, N.C.

    Published May 28, 2014 by

    Photo: Charlotte skyline by James Willamor on Flickr. Fortune 500 companies from Duke Energy to Bank of America make Tryon Street in Charlotte, N.C., their home. But over the course of a mile, the main north-south thoroughfare through downtown tells a tale of two streets. South Tryon Street bustles with workers from high-rise office buildings, visitors to art museums and cultural centers, and bar and restaurant patrons. North Tryon Street—which was booming before the Great Recession—hasn’t seen the same kind of development recently. The Bank of America Corporate Center fills the first block of North Tryon and the Hearst Tower stands on the next block. But office buildings become sparse as Tryon continues north, with vacant lots and surface parking lots doing little to attract the foot traffic on which South Tryon thrives. Knight Foundation is working with civic leaders to change that. Last week the foundation brought two Gehl Studio urban planning experts to Charlotte to discuss ways to revitalize the North Tryon corridor. Gehl Studio is part of Copenhagen-based Gehl Architects, known for emphasizing “the relationship between the built environment and people’s quality of life.” The philosophy aligns closely with Knight Foundation’s strategy of creating places that attract, retain and harness young talent and encourage people to mix and share ideas, says Susan Patterson, Knight Foundation’s Charlotte program director. The idea is to develop streetscapes that are as friendly to people as they are to vehicles.  
  • Article

    Rethinking citizen engagement

    Published May 28, 2014 by

    Clay Johnson is CEO of the Department of Better Technology and co-founder of Blue State Digital,  the firm that built and managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign for the presidency. With the input of Johnson and other thought leaders, Knight Foundation is launching OpenGov and You, a companion to the 2013 Aspen Institute Forum on Communication and Society (FOCAS) that explores how we might tackle the obstacles to government openness and transparency. FOCAS: Clay Johnson Much of the modern open government movement has its roots in politics. Starting with the Howard Dean campaign for president in 2004, and Dean's record-breaking fundraising hauls, we saw politicians start recognizing that the Internet, like television and mail, was critical to electoral victory. They started making websites and hiring digital natives to help run their campaigns, and in 2008, you saw many of those digital natives help elect a president and move into the federal administration. And I think the expectation was that that technology -- the kind of engaging technology that helped inspire people to organize and elect Barack Obama -- would carry into government. Contractors and vendors certainly thought so: I remember the early days of the Obama administration: For weeks, the Verizon Center arena in Washington, D.C., was wrapped in a banner that said "Adobe means Open Government." RELATED LINK "Taking the next steps for open government" by Waldo Jaquith on KnightBlog "Understanding the citizen" by Ellen S. Miller on KnightBlog View the series, "Open Gov and You" Data.gov, to help citizens get data, Recovery.gov, to help citizens track spending, a brand new Federal Register, for the legions of people who track Federal Register notices every day, and We the People -- a website with the promise of making the executive branch accountable to the public. In our eagerness, I think we not only failed to test some assumptions, but we also -- in our lack of knowledge of how government worked -- missed some fairly significant opportunities to create change. And more importantly, in our rush to engage with the public, we probably created some distractions that could actively cause harm. Take We the People as an example. It's the White House's acclaimed petition website that lets anybody create a petition and if they get over a set-number of responses, the White House says it will respond. It's a compelling user experience; it's simple to start petitions, and to sign them. So compelling that this net neutrality petition has over 100,000 signatures. This other one has just under 100,000. And while a third one, only weeks old, has a paltry 60,000, it still as of this writing dwarves requests for comments on the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory comment system (the one that matters): just over 30,000 comments have been submitted.    
  • Article

    Library Acts of Culture: ‘I happened to walk into the public library, and I heard all this music’

    Published May 28, 2014 by

    One of Philadelphia’s oldest dance companies and a driving force behind the African cultural renaissance in the region, Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble, surprised Philadelphia’s library patrons on a recent afternoon as part of Knight Foundation’s Library Acts of Culture. “I happened to walk into the public library, and I heard all this music,” said library visitor Milton Robinson. “I said, am I in the right place? I stopped and went over to see it for myself.” Drummers and dancers performed Fula Fare, a celebratory dance of the Fulani people of West Africa. By performing pop-up performances at four West Philadelphia neighborhood libraries, the dance company got the community thinking about its libraries in a whole new way. Photo: Kùlú Mèlé African Dance & Drum Ensemble performs a Library Act of Culture at the Free Library of Philadelphia's Paschalville Library. Photos by Dave Tavani. Surprised visitor Kadeena Fulton said, “It was fantastic. For them to come into this area of an inner city…it was a good idea, so that we can know where our roots come from.” About Knight Foundation’s Library Acts of Culture program Knight Foundation’s Library Acts of Culture brings artists out of performance halls and into libraries and people’s everyday lives. As libraries continue to reinvent themselves in the digital age, they have become spaces that are more about creation than collection. Spread throughout neighborhoods, we thought Library Acts were an organic way to bring the arts to all communities. Read more. - Megan Wendell is a communications consultant for Knight Foundation
  • Article

    “Miami Sites Project” auditions

    Published May 28, 2014 by

    By The Tattooed Ballerinas Dancers come prepared for Modern/ Contemporary Movement and Improvisation. Helping to celebrate two of Miami’s historic gems, choreographer Hattie Mae Williams will present a site-specific dance event at the Venetian Pool — for its 90th birthday, 2015 — and a dance/film project at The Miami Marine...
  • Article

    Charlotte Shakespeare Festival goes psychedelic

    Published May 27, 2014 by

    The ninth annual Charlotte Shakespeare Festival brings Shakespeare forward to the psychedelic 1960s and '70s with productions of “Love’s Labor’s Lost” from May 29-June 15, and “Measure for Measure” from August 7-24. As always, the festival is free, but donations are encouraged. “Love’s Labor’s Lost” will be performed outside at...
  • Article

    Carlota Pradera gives us “Bare Bones”

    Published May 27, 2014 by

    Carlota Pradera returns to the Miami Theater Center as part of its 2013-2014 SandBox Series for the premiere of "Bare Bones," an experimental dance performance featuring special guest artist Lazaro Godoy, who has just returned after a few years performing in Israel. I sat down with Pradera & Godoy on...
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    The SPCO’s Liquid Music series announces its 2014-15 season

    Published May 27, 2014 by

    By Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s pioneering Liquid Music series announces today the full schedule of events for its 2014-15 season. Liquid Music, which begins its third season this fall, expands the world of classical music through innovative new projects, boundary-defying artists, and unique presentation formats....
  • Article

    Prototyping Festival engages residents to improve public spaces

    Published May 27, 2014 by

    Deborah Cullinan is executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Neil Hrushowy is manager of the City Design Group in the San Francisco Planning Department. The two organizations are partnering on a festival to promote civic engagement and improve public spaces, an effort that Knight Foundation supports. Photo by JulianPhotographe on Flickr. In 1847, surveyor Jasper O’Farrell placed a new street grid in the center of San Francisco to help accommodate its growing population. This grid became Market Street: At 120 feet wide, it allowed for many modes of transit, and most importantly, grand sidewalks. Over 160 years later, Market Street is in the midst of an historic transformation; being redesigned and reimagined from the ground up. For a street with the greatest levels of pedestrian activity on the West Coast, this is no small undertaking—and it is critical that the diverse communities of people and organizations that share Market Street are deeply involved in this process. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for civic engagement on a massive, public scale, with the potential to affect the way cities around the world undertake urban design projects. Today, we are thrilled to announce the Market Street Prototyping Festival—a new platform (inspired by the 2012 Urban Prototyping Festival led by Gray Area Foundation for the Arts) for residents to engage in the planning process in a way that is active, innovative and fun. For three days in October, nearly two miles of San Francisco’s main thoroughfare will showcase new ideas to improve a city’s public spaces in a way that encourages them to think differently. While this project will be focused in San Francisco, thanks to the support of the Knight Foundation it will have a much bigger impact. Civic leaders from Knight communities will attend the festival to see what ideas they can take to their own cities. We’re hopeful that it will be instructive.
  • Article

    Art on a string

    Published May 23, 2014 by

    Illusion is part of the site-specific line sculptures. For art aficionados in South Florida, the work of Karen Rifas should be familiar, and for good reason. For several decades she has created distinct sculptures and site-specific installations that deal with spatial aesthetics, and are sometimes accompanied...