• Article

    Hip hop as art

    Published July 14, 2011 by

    From July 31st to August 7th, 2011 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily), award-winning hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris brings to Miami the 2011 Illadelph Miami Legends Festival, a series of hip-hop workshops and dance classes scheduled to be held at the brand new South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center and the...
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    A look inside MOCAD’s public programming

    Published July 13, 2011 by

    By Ben Hernandez, Public Programs Coordinator, MOCAD From its earliest days, MOCAD’s public programming – a variety of music, lectures and panels that complement the Museum’s exhibitions – has provided the community of Detroit with treasures that will carry on for years to come. The breadth of these experiences continues...
  • Article

    New initiative promotes digital literacy through game design in Silicon Valley

    Published July 13, 2011 by

    (Students use Globaloria in Austin, Texas., one of the five communities currently using the platform) More than 5,000 youth and young adults in Silicon Valley schools, youth clubs and community centers will soon become interactive programmers and civic advocates thanks to a $950,000 Knight Foundation grant for an innovative platform that uses games design to teach digital literacy. Over the next three years, Silicon Valley youth will use the World Wide Workshop’s Globaloria platform to develop, program and blog about their own educational games.  The idea is to leverage social issues and open-source principles to craft collaborative games that provide youth with the digital and media literacy skills they will need to fully engage in the 21st century information age.  The initiative will also connect participants to important civic concepts. “Globaloria presents a powerful technology-driven participation model that is relevant to today’s Internet-focused generation.  It allows them to conceptualize, design and program their own web games on important topics, and to engage in civics by ‘learning by doing,’” said Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, president and founder of the World Wide Workshop. The initiative will further provide local instructors with training to help the youth form teams and conduct the online research necessary to effectively design their projects. World Wide Workshop will be ...
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    BalletX debuts Roger C Jeffrey’s A Soliloquy Among Many

    Published July 13, 2011 by

    By Colby Damon, BalletX Roger C. Jeffrey's "a soliloquy among many" makes its world premiere July 20th-24th at Philadelphia's The Wilma Theater. Today dancer Colby Damon writes about the performance... The forging of choreography can be compared to painting. After an idea is conceived, some artists spend time meticulously filling...
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    Investigative reporting by Oklahoma Watch drives state prison reform

    Published July 13, 2011 by

    By Tom Lindley, Editor, Oklahoma Watch Faced with the nation’s highest incarceration rate for women, overcrowded prisons and rising costs, Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved landmark legislation that will begin to address problems in the criminal justice system. The action comes on the heels of a six-month investigation prompted by Oklahoma Watch, a winner of the Knight Community Information Challenge, and supported by media across the state, including the state’s two major news organizations, the World and The Oklahoman. The investigation focused attention on the problem and created a climate for prison reform, which was a feat in itself in a state so keen on locking people up. More than 25 other members of the Oklahoma Press Association also published some of the 35 plus stories produced by Oklahoma Watch, the World and The Oklahoman. The broadcast phase of the project also involved public television outlet OETA and public radio stations KWGS-Tulsa and KGOU-Norman, OK. Oklahoma Watch is a winner of the third Community Information Challenge. Other supporters include the Tulsa Community Foundation, Ethics and Excellence Foundation and The George Kaiser Family Foundation. The long-form journalism project is focused on the many lengthy sentences handed out to non-violent female offenders and the cost to their children and taxpayers. Oklahoma has had the highest incarceration rate, per capita, in the nation 14 of the past 15 years...
  • Article

    Science and the unseen at Grizzly Grizzly

    Published July 12, 2011 by

    July at Grizzly Grizzly offers a tight, if efficient, use of the small gallery’s space and explorations that are far more mental than aesthetic. The show by artist Jeff Williams is entitled "There is Not Anything That Returns to Nothing," and the creations within it confront our notions of materials,...
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    Knight Latin American Fellowship at Harvard to include new experimental projects

    Published July 12, 2011 by

    (2011 Nieman Fellow Hollman Morris Rincón talks to Nieman Foundation curator Bob Giles) Good news for Latin American journalists, advocates of free press and communications scholars alike: today the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University announced Knight Foundation’s support of the Knight Latin American Nieman Fellowship to include experimental fieldwork projects that help discover new ways to inform and engage communities. Knight Foundation has supported Nieman in its goal to encourage journalistic excellence and freedom of the press in Latin America for over 20 years.  Now, with a grant totaling nearly $200,000, Knight will provide Latin American fellows with the opportunity to pursue projects at the end of their yearlong fellowships at Nieman.  Projects will focus on providing deeper coverage of important stories, creating new journalistic enterprises or researching policies and their impact. “We hope the field projects allow the fellows to ...            
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    Expanded Concert of Colors returns to Detroit

    Published July 12, 2011 by

    The Concert of Colors, the annual music festival celebrating the rich cultural diversity of metro-Detroit, takes places this weekend in Midtown. The 19th year of the festival finds the addition of two new participating venues — the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and the Scarab Club will...
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    Local gallery scene is bittersweet

    Published July 11, 2011 by

    It is no secret our economy is struggling. These challenges impact every area of society, the arts included. However, out of these difficult times, new business models and opportunities for success are born. Like other cities, the local gallery scene in Charlotte is bittersweet. During the past 20 years, Charlotte’s...
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    New digital media incubator will help spur innovation in Philadelphia

    Published July 11, 2011 by

    A new digital media incubator launched today in Philadelphia will help promote media innovation by providing startups with a launching pad and creating a culture of innovation in the region. 87 percent of new companies that benefit from completing an incubation program tend to stay in business according to the National Business Incubation Association. Insights from the Knight News Challenge and our work in media innovation also show that the most successful media innovation projects are nurtured. The project experiments with a new model we hope will benefit digital media startups, traditional news organizations and Philadelphia, one of Knight Foundation’s resident communities and the fourth largest media market in the U.S. according to Nielsen.
  • Article

    Knight Open Government Survey finds oldest unanswered FOIA request is 20 years old

    Published July 11, 2011 by

    (Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president) The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which is supposed to guarantee prompt responses from the government to information requests, turned 45 last week. However, the 2011 Knight Open Government Survey showed that some federal agencies have been letting requests languish for years – including a request to the National Archives dating back to 1991. FOIA, which President Johnson signed into law in 1966, dictates that government agencies process and respond to requests within 20 days, with a possible 10-day extension to accommodate “unusual circumstances.” However, according to the 2011 Knight Open Government Survey, eight  federal agencies have requests that date back more than a decade, demonstrating that the government still has a long way to go before it successfully fulfills the terms of its own law.   “We need public information, just like we need freedom of speech or freedom of the press,” said Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation. “In order to be great citizens, we need to know something about what we’re voting about, we need to know how our government is working.” In order to test which government agencies were responding promptly to FOIA requests, the National Security Archive ...