• Article

    Circ X cabaret returns with successful string of shows

    Published July 20, 2015 by

    Video by CircX on YouTube Following a run of sold-out shows last fall, Circ X returned with another three provocative performances on June 26 and 27. The local troupe combined components of burlesque, comedy, music and circus into an interactive cabaret experience. The events tackled themes of sexuality, objectification and gender fluidity. In addition to acrobats soaring through the air and a Charlie Chaplin-inspired musical number, bearded men dressed in drag roamed the audience, asking attendees to describe the performance. See what they had to say and view excerpts of the performances in the video above. Alec Schwartzman is an editorial intern for Knight Foundation. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @AMSchwartzman.
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    61 ideas named finalists in Knight Arts Challenge St. Paul

    Published July 20, 2015 by

    Today, we’re excited to share the finalists of the 2015 Knight Arts Challenge St. Paul—61 ideas culled from 450-plus submissions from neighborhoods across St. Paul, Minn. The list below is packed with exciting ideas that reflect the new St. Paul, a diverse and collaborative city. We also see a few trends: ideas that will remix the classics with a St. Paul spin, ideas that re-envision public transit spaces as a platform for the arts and projects that seek to use the arts to address important community issues.     We will announce the winners on Oct. 6 after a panel of local artists and arts advocates review the finalists’ detailed proposals. Winners will share in $1.5 million. Thanks to everyone who submitted an idea, and we look forward to celebrating with the winners in the fall. Nicole Chipi is interim arts program officer for Knight Foundation.
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    Wynwood BID steers community to more balanced future with revitalization plan

    Published July 20, 2015 by

    People gather outside Panther Coffee in Wynwood. Photo by Alec Schwartzman. This post has been updated to reflect that the Wynwood Business Improvement District already has off-duty officers patroling the area and ambassadors who work to keep streets and sidewalks free of trash.  Thursday may bring fresh changes to the Wynwood community. The Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District (NRD) Plan, approved unanimously by the City of Miami Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board recently, will go before the City Commission for final authorization. “For Wynwood, this will be the first time in its modern history where the community has come together to express a common vision for the future,” said Albert Garcia, vice chair of the Wynwood Business Improvement District (BID). “It is setting the framework for responsible residential and commercial development that balances the history and character of the arts district we have all grown to love today.” Established in 2013 with Knight Foundation support, the Wynwood BID is a collection of local property and business owners with the mission to make Wynwood an internationally recognized epicenter for art, culture and business. Keeping the original visions of developers David Lombardi and Tony Goldman in mind, the leaders of the BID created this proposal with the intention of preserving the industrial and artistic nature of the neighborhood while creating a community where people can both live and work. “It’s a continuation of the renaissance they were the catalyst of,” Garcia said. “When they came to Wynwood, it was largely abandoned by the garment industry that had left. In its place, they brought back people, businesses and creatives at a much-needed time when there were no cultural arts communities. Miami is now going through an immense cultural renaissance with institutions like [Perez Art Museum Miami], which have put us at a world-class level.”
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    ‘Knight Cities’ podcast: Miami Science Barge, a showcase for environmental education

    Published July 19, 2015 by

    Can an old barge sitting in Biscayne Bay help the city of Miami come face to face with the challenge of climate change? That’s the intent of the Miami Science Barge, a creation of CappSci and one of 32 winners of the Knight Cities Challenge in its first year. Alissa Farina is an innovation associate at CappSci, a foundation that applies “science and engineering to real-world problems, and one of the organizers of the Miami Science Barge. Here are five things you should know about the project: 1.     The Miami Science Barge will be a floating urban ecological laboratory and public environmental education center on Biscayne Bay at Museum Park in downtown Miami.
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    How to fly high: Spirit CEO offers entrepreneurs 5 tips for building successful businesses

    Published July 17, 2015 by

    Entrepreneurs are soaring high in Miami, with the city recently ranking No.2 on the Kauffman Index for startup activity. But how can someone go from being an entrepreneur to a successful business magnate? Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, attempted to answer the complicated question during this month’s Startup Grind Miami fireside chat at The LAB Miami. “Back in 2005 when I joined Spirit Airlines, we had to think of Spirit as a startup because it was a company that wasn’t successful financially, so we had to go through a lot of the issues that startup companies have to go through,” Baldanza said. “We’re now a successful company and we’re a growing company, so we realized that a lot of the lessons we learned and the mistakes we made have some commonality with the people here.” During the session, Baldanza talked about marketing strategies, identifying business opportunities and focusing on a very specific customer, something Spirit is well known for. Here are his top five insights: 1. Have a clear sense of what you’re going to do and know how it differentiates from your competitors. Before Baldanza joined Spirit in 2005, it was a traditional airline. Now Spirit tries to offer the lowest possible airfare in the market. 2. Have a very specific and well-defined customer. Under Baldanza’s guidance, Spirit appeals to customers who pay for their own tickets, as opposed to business travelers. To do that, Spirit eliminated all the airplane “extras,” such as additional leg room and free meals, and offered them as separate charges to bring the core cost of the airfare down.
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    Join Knight via live stream for civic life conference and News Challenge: Elections winners

    Published July 17, 2015 by

    Knight Foundation is headed back to Austin, and this time we’re announcing the winners of the Knight News Challenge on Elections.We’ll deliver the news on Wednesday, July 22, during a one-day conference hosted by the Annette Strauss Institute of Civic Life at the Moody College of Communications at the University of Texas at Austin. “Breaking Through: Increasing Civic Participation Before, During and After Elections will feature an impressive lineup of technologists, journalists, government officials and academics who will share experiences and discuss trends surrounding political civic engagement. We will live-stream the invitation-only event at knightfoundation.org/live.We will kick off the programming with the News Challenge: Elections announcement at 9:30 a.m. CDT, followed by project presentations from each winner. We received more than 1,000 submissions, which were narrowed to 46 finalists. The winners will receive a share of more than $3 million to research and develop new approaches and methods for better informing voters and increasing civic participation throughout the elections process.The challenge opened in February as a collaboration between Knight, the Democracy Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which each contributed $250,000, and the Rita Allen Foundation, which contributed $150,000. They will be with us in Austin.The conference will continue with the following keynote speeches and ignite talks:11:15 a.m. | “Engagement Voters: How Do People Really Think?”
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    Obsolete Media Miami preserves picture, film history

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    Climbing up the back stairs of a building in the Design District on North Miami Avenue, you pass by a door with flags signifying some kind of Buddhist center on your way to the newly opened offices and work space of Obsolete Media Miami, which is shortened as O.M.M. That’s pretty good karma, sounding as it does like the Buddhist meditative chant. O.M.M. is like nothing else in Miami. It is a picture and film archive, an equipment repository, a space for artists, filmmakers and researchers to delve into the world of “obsolete” items, such as 35 mm slides, film reels, cameras, projectors. Run by artists Barron Sherer and Kevin Arrow, it's like, as the artists say, “an A/V club” – a term likely also obsolete to many 20-somethings.
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    A weekend of fun and fundraising in Hamtramck

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    Hamtramck was a hub of fun and fundraising last weekend, as two of the city’s venerated art institutions held head-to-head group shows in support of their innovative arts programming. Popps Packing was the scene of the 3rd Annual Pinewood Derby—a chic update to the car race that was traditionally the mien of Boy Scouts fundraising. More than 200 base kits were distributed amongst Detroit and Hamtramck art stars, handy folks and children, and dozens of them returned to the mothership on Saturday, July 11th for a day of racing and an evening of silent auctioning to raise money for Popps.
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    Ohio Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ is clever and fun

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    “Much Ado about Nothing” is actually about a lot. You’ll find that out when you see the fun-filled and splendid dramatic production by Ohio Shakespeare Festival of what has been called one of William Shakespeare’s best comedies. With a little research, you can find out that the word “nothing” would have been pronounced as “noting” in the Bard’s day. The word connoted then notions of gossip, rumor, eavesdropping and the like. In this play, the word gets at the idea of using “noting” for trickery or, in political terms, treachery.
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    Business accelerator at The Idea Center at Miami Dade College nurtures student entrepreneurs

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    Last week’s showcase at the Center for Research and Transformative Entrepreneurship (CREATE), a venture accelerator program at The Idea Center at Miami Dade College, suggested a microcosm of entrepreneurial South Florida.  The presentations by the student entrepreneurs included ideas ranging from the eminently practical to the poetic. They featured apps for learning languages, finding what to do in South Florida and managing parking, but also bibs for toddlers. There was an app to monitor and verify home health care services and a plan for a co-working place for trainers but also a project to turn a park in downtown Miami into an open-air public music lounge. “We hear the term ‘accelerator’ thrown around. It’s one of the buzzwords these days,” said Wifredo L. Fernandez, director of the center, a 16-week program open to Miami Dade College students in all disciplines. “But while we want these businesses to flourish and make millions of dollars, the point for us is that [the student entrepreneurs] have the tools, the mindset and the skills to pursue their ideas and develop their solutions. This isn’t a pitch competition. This is a celebration.” Participants are identified by Fernandez—“No more than 10 at a time,” he notes—and enter the program with their business ideas at different stages and with different needs. The presentations, restricted to 5 minutes, not only offered quick descriptions of each project, but also tantalizing glimpses of the spirit and personal stories of the students. The Idea Center is funded in part by Knight Foundation as part of its efforts to invest in South Florida’s emerging innovators and entrepreneurs.
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    Coming soon, Akron, the Knight Arts Challenge!

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    On Aug. 10, the Knight Arts Challenge Akron will officially open for applications, offering $1 million for the best ideas for the arts. This challenge is for everyone. Nonprofits, businesses, individuals and students are all encouraged to apply. While the initial application is easy to complete – we only ask that you describe your idea in 150 words – we are hosting several events to provide more information. On July 29, you can join us for happy hour at BLU Jazz+ and meet the Knight Foundation staff leading the challenge. Please RSVP on Eventbrite.
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    Local Elections in America Project expands effort to put more information in hands of citizens

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    Melissa Marschall is a professor of political science at Rice University and the principal investigator of the Local Elections in America Project (LEAP), which Knight Foundation supports. Ryan Holeywell is the senior editor of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. The United States is viewed as an archetype of democracy, yet fundamental questions about the nature of our government and the way it’s elected are impossible for us to answer. What type of people run for office? Are our elections competitive? Do our elections have strong turnout or weak turnout? Simply put: We don’t know. It may seem hard to imagine that we lack the answers to these startlingly simple questions. After all, countless professors, journalists and political operatives have made entire careers studying American government. And following politics is a pastime of millions of Americans. But it’s true. More than 200 years after our Founding Fathers established this democracy, we still don’t know entirely how it works. Because of the way our government is structured, the biggest part of it – local government – is often shrouded in mystery.
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    Feature on Knight traces foundation’s evolution from journalism to its role in innovation today

    Published July 15, 2015 by

    Photo credit: Michael D. Bolden The following article - which provides an overview of Knight Foundation’s history and its strategic grantmaking and details many of its existing grantees and partners - is an excerpt from Private Wealth magazine. The article “Beyond the Fourth Estate” can be read in its entirely online for free. “I think in order to understand what we do and how we do it you have to go back to the beginning. You have to go back to the intent of the donors. We are first and foremost a private foundation that was started with a small handful of dollars from [Knight Newspapers], but primarily all of our wealth comes from Clara Knight, Jack Knight and Jim Knight. In fact, the company, Knight Ridder Inc., never put in a dime. It was all private wealth. ...They ran it, obviously, in the cities and towns where they ran newspapers for decades.” —Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation Knight Ridder is perhaps best known for its stock and trade in newspapers. It was once the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., with properties from coast to coast, including such prestigious publications as the San Jose Mercury News, the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press. The Knight Foundation, a $2.4 billion non-profit institution in Miami, has offered prized journalism fellowship programs, university chairs and grants for 65 years.
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    17 San Jose arts groups receive funding to engage Silicon Valley

    Published July 14, 2015 by

    At Knight, our goal is not to just fund artistic excellence, but to seek out projects that authentically engage their communities. Each year, we fund projects big and small that experiment with ways to reach new audiences, and to keep the current ones wanting more. Today, I’m excited to share that we are funding 17 organizations in San Jose, Calif., both large institutions and grassroots groups that strive to put the community at the center of their work. Together, they are receiving $630,000 for their efforts. In the list below, you’ll find some theater groups that are experimenting with new technologies and strategies. City Lights Theater Company, for example, had a character in a play this spring created through artificial intelligence, and projected on stage with animation. Opera Cultura invited the community to participate in a staged reading of an experimental opera based on the Mexican classic “Bless Me, Ultima.” And next fall, Naatak, one of the country’s largest Indian theaters, will present a new Hindu work on the often sensitive subject of Indian widowhood. We’re excited by several projects too that are invigorating public spaces by turning them into their stage. San Jose Taiko, for example, which tours nationally, is playing to the home crowd with free pop-up performances citywide. And The Commons will continue its immersive performances in the city’s parks. You can catch them on June 24 at St. James Park for a blend of big band jazz and a quilting bee. The Silicon Valley Ballet also is planning an exciting collaboration this fall – one of the largest between Cuban and American performing arts organizations since the revolution. The ballet will be the first American company to present Cuban choreographer Alicia Alonso’s “Giselle,” and programming will contextualize the recent opening of relations between the two countries. I’ll be in San Jose over the next few days, meeting our grantees and getting to know the cultural community better. I’m excited to see many of these projects develop, and the opportunity to learn from their progress.
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    StoryCorps expands its efforts to collect the stories of our lives

    Published July 14, 2015 by

    Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps, an oral history project that in 2014 received a grant from the Knight Prototype Fund to develop an app. Today, Knight Foundation is announcing $600,000 in new support to enhance and expand the app, and integrate it into existing StoryCorps programs. This post has been updated to reflect the additional support StoryCorps received from TED for its app.  When I first imagined StoryCorps in 2003, my vision was simple—to build recording booths where two people who knew each other well would get together (with the help of a trained facilitator) to share a conversation and preserve the important stories in their lives. I hoped that one day there would be booths across the nation accessible to everyone, allowing us to preserve a broad cross-section of American voices. A SAMPLING: Enabled by Storycorps  Excerpt: “Aw, you’re funny mom, you still are really funny.” Listen. Excerpt: “There are so many moments I wish I had savored more.” Listen. Excerpt: “Daddy, um, has big questions that he wants to ask me.” Listen. Back then, I never imagined that in a short period, technology would change not only how we live our lives, but also what it means for two people to record a StoryCorps interview. As a result, over the last three months I have listened to the voice of a school teacher in Texas whose mother is living with dementia as she tells her mom how much she loves her and how she dreads the day the disease will take away her ability to speak; to a married Massachusetts couple in their 30s with five kids as they talk about the first time they met and how their lives are different today from what they dreamed they would be when they started dating in high school; and to a 4-year-old girl in Tennessee as she tells her mom that when she grows up she wants to be a soldier just like her father—an Army sergeant who recently returned to the States after serving another tour of duty in Afghanistan.  None of these conversations would have been preserved without the prototype grant StoryCorps received in 2014 from Knight Foundation that we used to help us develop and launch the StoryCorps app. People no longer need to make an appointment and travel to a booth to have their conversations recorded and archived at the Library of Congress. The introduction of the app, which was brought into public beta with additional support from TED, made a unique StoryCorps experience available anywhere in the world to anyone with a mobile device, and now that we have the app in people’s hands, we have seen that it is not simply a piece of technology, but a tool bringing people closer together. We are reaching individuals who would have never heard of StoryCorps even if we had hundreds of booths roaming the country. In the short time the app has been available—we launched it at the global TED Conference in March—it has been downloaded 220,000 times with nearly 8,000 stories uploaded to Storycorps.me. Children, parents, grandparents, friends, and even strangers across the globe are sitting down together in their homes, churches, schools and cars to tell stories and share experiences. Even more importantly, they are listening to each other. Knight’s new support will have a tremendous impact on the success and growth of StoryCorps by making the app experience more enjoyable and allowing us to reach more people. The upgrades and improvements include adding features such as internationalization and accessibility; adding support for tablet devices; implementing a more powerful and robust way to search and browse interviews; improving the recording and uploading process; and more.