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    ‘Start-Up City: Miami’ spotlights regional roles in building community of entrepreneurs

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    Above: Richard Florida kicks off 'Start-Up City: Miami'. Photo credit: Michael D. Bolden. Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine has become a believer in Miami’s potential as a tech startup hub. The mayor, who notoriously called it “the dumbest idea in the world” for Miami Beach to do anything other than travel and tourism, agreed to be interviewed by urbanist Richard Florida at “Start-up City: Miami,” a conference put on by The Atlantic Cities and Knight Foundation Monday at New World Center. While Miami Beach lacks the cheap office space that startups seek, it can play an integral role in the greater metro area’s emerging tech ecosystem. “Miami Beach is a great place to start a business. It’s a great place to live, and while we may not have a lot of office place, we have places right across the bay that do,” he said, referring to the city of Miami and adjacent communities. Miami Beach also has a tremendous concentration of capital, and as investors, “we can play a regional role.” The conference, held for the second time in Miami Beach, brought together many believers in the region’s potential, as well as some who had already succeeded. A panel on attracting and retaining talent, for example, featured Maurice Ferré, who just sold his medical robotics company, MAKO Surgical Corp., for $1.65 billion, and serial entrepreneur Demian Bellumio, COO of big data content recommendation company Senzari.
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    Library Acts of Culture: West Boulevard Library

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    Library goers swayed in their seats as a trio of instrumentalists and a vocalist performed at the West Boulevard Library in Charlotte on Tuesday, February 18. The musical walk-through was part of the Knight Foundation's Library Acts of Culture program. The program, executed in partnership with the Arts & Science...
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    Readying Miami for change in Cuba

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    Photo credit: Flickr user Doug Wheller. The Václav Havel Initiative for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University supports democratic aspirations around the world, with emphasis on Cuba and the Americas. Below, Martin Palous, a School of International Public Affairs Senior Fellow and director of the Václav Havel Initiative, writes about the Preparing Miami for Democratic Transition in Cuba project, which Knight Foundation supports. After 55 years of dictatorship, will change come to Cuba? Perhaps nowhere on earth outside of the island nation itself is interest in this question greater than in Miami. Anticipation of coming changes takes many forms in our city, ranging from cynical disinterest to passionate expectations for the recovery of lost property. We at FIU’s Václav Havel Initiative for Human Rights and Diplomacy are collaborating with Knight Foundation to help our community understand the elements that go into freeing a nation from totalitarian rule and to successfully sustaining that change. The goal of the Preparing Miami for Democratic Transition in Cuba project is to educate Miamians, not just Cuban Americans, about the realities of the process of peaceful transition so that the community will know better what to expect as Cuba changes. For the first year, the project is planning three public panel discussions and one town hall-style forum designed to expose Miamians to a wide range of information on how countries become free and stay that way, including international experiences, successes, failures and opportunities. The idea is to help the community manage its expectations through a better grasp of the institutions, procedures, policies and attitudes that must undergo change for a free Cuba.
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    Reserve Your Tickets for AIRIE Day Trip with Christy Gast

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    By AIRIE Miami-based artist and AIRIE Board Member Christy Gast will host a day trip to the Hole-in-the-Donut region of the Everglades in conjunction with her solo exhibition at Locust Projects entitled Inholdings, as a special fundraiser for the AIRIE program. The tour begins at Locust Projects with refreshments and...
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    AIRIE March 2014 update

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    By Nathaniel Sandler, AIRIE fellow Living alone in the swamp is like playing a role in a silent film except that the music is not Benny Hill; it is the constant murmuring hum of whatever beast lies afoot and in earshot. Were it actually a silent film maybe you’d run...
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    The Project [theatre] March update

    Published April 1, 2014 by

    By Jackie Rivera, The Project [theatre] To quote Drake, “Started from the bottom, now the whole team here” and we at The Project are banging on all four cylinders for our next project. Yes, 4. Prior to now, we've been a three-man-band for over a year and we are happy...
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    Dance eXchange: March 2014 update

    Published March 31, 2014 by

    By Colby Damon, BalletX dancer About a month ago, the dancers at BalletX were afforded an opportunity to learn the pedagogical practices forged and perpetuated by the National Dance Institute in New York City. I had heard of the program for a while, and knew much of its founder Jacques...
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    The Light Factory revitalized

    Published March 31, 2014 by

    The Light Factory. As The Light Factory- Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film (TLF) settles into its new location on 1817 Central Avenue, a new lineup of photography classes will begin in April. Despite last October’s suspension of operations and dire outlook for this 41-year-old organization–one...
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    O, Miami is back!

    Published March 31, 2014 by

    The O, Miami Poetry Festival is back. This means one thing: it's time to get up, get out and experience poetry for all. During the month of April, National Poetry Month, O, Miami will use the city and its landscape as a canvas for the literary arts. [caption id="attachment_65329" align="aligncenter"...
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    Forum convenes community leaders to move cities from talk to action

    Published March 31, 2014 by

    Above: Testing innovative modes of transportation at the EcoMobility Festival in Suwon City, South Korea. From left, Gil Penalosa, executive director of 8-80 Cities; Suwon Mayor Tae-Young Yeom; and Konrad Otto-Zimmerman, secretary-general of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability and festival creative director. Photo credit: 8-80 Cities, EcoMobility World Festival 2013. Gil Penalosa is the former commissioner of parks, sport and recreation for the city of Bogota, Colombia, and executive director of 8-80 Cities, a nonprofit that promotes cities as places where people can walk, bike, access public transit and connect in vibrant public spaces. Below, he writes about “The Doable City” forum, which Knight Foundation supports. We’ve been building cities for thousands of years, but for most of the last century we’ve been planning them around moving cars from place to place rather than the happiness of the people who live in them.  What makes a great city? I have had the opportunity to travel and visit many cities around the world, meeting with government decision-makers, community leaders, and citizens both young and old. Unfortunately, only a few cities share the great qualities that all of them could have: a good transit system; fantastic parks and public spaces; being walkable; and, like Copenhagen, bikeable areas that reduce congestion and increase the overall health of the population. People of all ages are out on the streets, walking to restaurants, biking to work, enjoying parks with friends and families. It’s not a financial issue. It’s not a technical issue. It’s a political issue. Let’s build cities for everyone. “The Doable City” forum will bring us closer to that. We’ve probably all heard many reasons for why it can’t be done: It’s too cold, it’s too expensive, it’ll take too long, and implicitly it may not be popular from a political perspective; but if we focus on what we can do right now – making strategic changes – in the end there will be big differences. It’s like the Ciclovia in Bogota, which simply opens the streets to people and provides free and accessible recreation to millions of people every weekend. Or, like Times Square in New York, which transformed a car-dominated street into a safe and vibrant place for people, with little money and lots of political guts.
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    Poetry hits the big screen with O, Miami Wallcast this week

    Published March 30, 2014 by

    Photo credit: City of Miami Beach Knight Foundation is founding sponsor of O, Miami, which seeks to enable every person in Miami-Dade County to encounter a poem during the month of April. Below, P. Scott Cunningham, founder and executive director of O, Miami, writes about the poetry festival, which includes an event each day in April and 25 poetry-in-public places projects. This Saturday, April 5, O, Miami is putting poetry on the side of the New World Center in Miami Beach. If you’ve ever been to one of the free movies in SoundScape Park or one of the concert Wallcasts, then you understand the experience. People bring blankets, chairs and picnic baskets to the park and watch the 7,000-square-foot screen and hear everything in surround sound. Combined with the beauty of SoundScape Park, the Wallcasts are one of the most unique urban experiences in America. O, Miami joined forces with New World Symphony and the city of Miami Beach to create a poetic experience on the wall, and Poetry in the Park is the result. The evening begins at 5 p.m. Three separate stages will host performances by musicians and poets, including members of the New World Symphony “house band” Somewhat Hungover, New World Symphony fellows, “Biscayne Poet” Oscar Fuentes, and members of the Miami Poetry Collective doing one of their famous pop-up “Poem Depots.” Miami food favorites such as La Latina, My Ceviche and Feverish Pops will have food for sale and KIND Bar will set up one of their “Flower Walls,” while giving away KIND snacks with poems attached to them.