• Article

    Fellowship awarded to Miami filmmaker for interactive work

    Published June 11, 2015 by

    Above: Alterations trailer by Juan Carlos Zaldívar For some eight years now, filmmaker, video artist and programmer Juan Carlos Zaldívar has been working on seeing his interactive short film Alterations come to fruition. Based on a script of his own, the story is in tune with what has been happening lately with the transgender community in its struggle for civil rights and respect. Securing funds for a film is no easy chore, however, especially for one where there are no superheroes, explosions, or aliens. This work focuses on the relationship between a young trans person, J, looking to reconnect now as a woman with her mother, who has suffered a heart attack. Thanks to a $7,500 fellowship from The Robert Giard Foundation and to a Hatchfund campaign, Zaldívar is on the way to finishing Alterations. Of the film, the foundation’s president, Carl Sylvestre, has stated: “With humor and tenderness, Juan Carlos depicts two individuals working to come to terms with the past while navigating their immediate pains.” The film, shot in Miami, stars performance artist Dani Arranka as J and Betzaida Ferrer as mother Mary Jane. It’s an example of the growing community of indie filmmakers in Miami who are gaining attention nationally for their work.
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    Creating success in cities by reimagining the civic commons

    Published June 11, 2015 by

    Photo: Cyclists in Museum Park near Perez Art Museum Miami. Credit: Robertson Adams. For more than 30 years, I’ve lived in the heart of downtown. Three cities, three downtown homes. So I especially enjoy living life in public and with strangers. It’s easy enough. In Miami, I just walk out my front door. I visit the parks across the street almost daily and the Perez Art Museum Miami at least once a month, use the Metromover regularly, and bike the Underline path on nice days. That makes the trends documented in the new report from City Observatory especially disturbing to me. The report, “Less in Common,” builds a clear and compelling case that many of the civic assets that we all used to share have eroded or become fractured. As the report’s author Joe Cortright writes, “We spend less time in public pools and more time in private gyms. We ride the bus or streetcar less and spend more time alone in our cars. High-income people increasingly live in separate wealthy neighborhoods, while people of modest means live in their own, less wealthy neighborhoods. “Our city governments, schools, and communities are more fragmented and less inclusive than in days gone by. In many cases, in leisure, entertainment, and schools, we’ve enabled people to secede from the commons and get a different level and quality of service.”
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    Miami community develops ideas to help citizens better connect with government

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    Photo: A civic hacker who worked on the public transportation challenge at Miami's National Day of Civic Hacking event takes input and questions from other hackers on his project. Credit: Paige Levin. If a hurricane struck this instant, would you know where to find shelter? On June 6, Miami civic hackers dealt with that problem by developing a text messaging system designed to help people get information about shelters in Miami-Dade County. It was one of many projects developed at Miami’s third annual National Day of Civic Hacking event. This year’s theme: principles for 21st century government. “Our elected leaders get it,” said Rebekah Monson, co-captain of Code for Miami. “They understand that we want to work with them, and we want to make this place better.”  Knight Foundation sponsored Miami’s Day of Civic Hacking at The Lab Miami for the third year in a row; Web developers, designers, students and officials from the Florida Department of Financial Services came together to rethink civic issues.
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    Miami Light Project celebrates 25th anniversary with contemporary music marathon

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    Miami Light Project turned down the lights and upped the ambiance for Saturday’s sold-out Bang on a Can marathon featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars, Spam Allstars and Knight Arts Challenge winner Nu Deco Ensemble. The event, held at the Light Box at Goldman Warehouse in Wynwood, commemorated the nonprofit’s 25th Anniversary Contemporary Performance Series, and featured the New York-based Bang on a Can All-Stars’ first public Miami performance. The group provided a preview of its set during a Miami Light “friendraising” event Friday night. “The marathon format (albeit in abbreviated form) was the perfect way to celebrate and to end the season with a ‘bang,’” said Beth Boone, artistic and executive director of Miami Light Project, a multiple Knight Arts Challenge winner. “With regard to opening with Nu-Deco and closing with Spam Allstars, it was really important … we lead and close with Miami-based artists. I have an internal mandate … which is rooted in supporting Miami-based artists equally as we do artists from around the world.” While Bang on a Can All-Stars and Spam Allstars have large followings, the anniversary marked only the second time Nu Deco Ensemble, founded by conductor Jacomo Rafael Bairos and composer Sam Hyken, has performed live. The 19-member orchestral group opened the show with a performance aimed at bridging classical and contemporary music to appeal to a wide audience.
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    $500,000 Knight Green Line Challenge opens for ideas

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    Photo: St. Paul's Green Line. Credit: Michael Hicks (CC) on Flickr. Today we’re opening the second year of the Knight Green Line Challenge. The challenge asks for your best ideas to tap into the potential of the Green Line connecting the Knight community of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn., to make surrounding neighborhoods more vibrant places to live and work. Winning projects will share in $500,000 in funding. This is in the second year of the challenge, and with it Knight Foundation is trying to move three things that we know are key to St Paul’s success. The challenge is seeking ideas that do one or more of the following in the neighborhoods along the Green Line: ·      Attract newcomers and excite current residents, ·      Break down community divides and increase economic opportunity, ·      And build and strengthen a culture of civic engagement. Applications should focus on making impact in one or more of the these areas – and need to take place in and benefit one of the six St. Paul neighborhoods along the Green Line: Downtown, Frogtown/Thomas-Dale, Hamline Midway, St. Anthony Park, Summit-University or Union Park.
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    Palfrey: The library of the future must be digital + physical

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    At a time every smartphone offers fast access to an immeasurable pool of information, many question the need for physical libraries. But public libraries are far more than free providers of information, which alone is an essential service for communities and democracy, argues author John Palfrey in his new book Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More than Ever in the Age of Google. The challenge ahead — Palfrey suggested Monday night at Miami Dade College’s Idea Center — is to create a hybrid that embraces both the physical and digital formats while updating the role of public libraries in this new information age. “I wrote this book as a celebration of libraries. The whole point is to make the case for libraries in the digital age,” said Palfrey, speaking before a standing-room-only audience of about 300 at the event sponsored by the Friends of the Miami-Dade Public Library, Miami-Dade Public Library System and Knight Foundation, which funds libraries as part of its mission to promote informed and engaged communities.
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    Knight Cities podcast: Resilience and recovery in the Big Easy

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    Roberta Brandes Gratz is the author of a new book on post-Katrina New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of the hurricane. It’s titled “We’re Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City,” and Richard Florida calls it an “absolute must read.”  Roberta also wrote “The Battle for Gotham:  New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.” With Jane Jacobs, she founded the Center for the Living City. She splits her time between New York and New Orleans. Here are five things you should know from my conversation with Roberta:
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    Overcoming the hurdles to why people – especially millennials – don’t vote local

    Published June 10, 2015 by

    Related Link Browse the Interactive Report Now Join the conversation Knight Foundation will host a Twitter chat at 1 p.m. ET on June 11, 2015 to discuss the findings and get public feedback. Follow @knightfdn and use #votelocal to participate.   When I was 7, I remember handing out literature at our polling place on Election Day for Buford Ellington, a Democrat who served as governor of Tennessee. In a seventh-grade class debate, I made the case for Barry Goldwater for president. In high school, I started knocking on doors for City Council candidates. At age 20 I proudly cast my first ballot in a presidential election. I’ve supported winners and losers, but I’ve never lost my enthusiasm for exercising my right as a citizen to vote. That’s why it is hard for me to understand why people – especially millennials – don’t vote, particularly in local elections. Concerned about this growing trend, Knight Foundation commissioned Lake Research Partners to help us learn why. Lake conducted focus groups in three very different Knight cities (Akron, Ohio, Miami and Philadelphia) with “drop-off” millennial voters – millennials who vote in national elections but do not vote in local elections. What we heard was, at once, disappointing but instructive. • Millennials don’t feel they have information they can trust about candidates in local races. • Local elections get far less attention than do national elections, so there is not as much social pressure to participate or news about when elections are occurring. • They are not certain what local government does, and they don’t believe local government reflects their values.
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    The personal as important as the technical at Personal Democracy Forum

    Published June 8, 2015 by

    Video: Dave Troy, "Segregation, Society, and the Future of Social Data" at PDF on YouTube The Personal Democracy Forum was born more than a decade ago out of the idea that the Internet’s power to connect us could transform democracy. At PDF15, held last week in New York, tech tools built on the Internet were ubiquitous, but the sessions often focused on the personal, in recognition that human behavior is central to even tech-driven change. The two-day conference is the annual collision of people involved in technology, governance, activism and more. While participants explored civic engagement from a number of angles, some notable research released at the conference focused on the most regularly measured aspect: voting. The first, by Google, sought to identify and study people who were generally informed about their communities but didn’t engage in the political process — a group it called “Interested Bystanders” and counted as close to half of the U.S. population. A common refrain they had was that voting wouldn’t lead to real change. However, the picture looked more promising when viewed through a personal lens; when civic action could be linked to something they cared about personally, or had personal expertise in, they were more likely to get involved.
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    Miami joins global event focused on government innovation for first time

    Published June 8, 2015 by

    Photo: Los Angeles GovJammers testing prototypes with citizens on the street. Credit: Global GoveJam. Ezequiel Williams is an entrepreneur, business designer, co-founder of Contexto, and organizer of the Miami Service Jam and Miami GovJam, supported by Knight Foundation.   This year Miami will participate in the Global GovJam, an international workshop focused on making government more innovative and user-friendly, for the first time. On June 10-11 Miami GovJam participants will join people in 37 other cities in an event aimed at teaching innovation techniques to government workers and people passionate about civic life. The GovJam movement started in Canberra, Australia, in 2012 with a group of 80 people. In the months that followed the same people were inspired to scope or launch over a dozen innovative public projects. In 2013 innovation consultants Markus Hormess and Adam Lawrence of WorkPlayExperience took the event global, bringing almost 30 cities on board. Since then, the event has expanded to attract the attention of senior government officials in Australia, France and the United Kingdom. The Miami GovJam offers local government workers and other professionals the opportunity to learn and practice design-thinking techniques applicable to government in a hands-on, project-driven workshop. Participants, also known as GovJammers, will work in small teams around a common design theme to conceive, design and prototype a new public service. Jammers will publish short videos of their prototypes on the Global GovJam website under a Creative Commons license to widely share their projects.
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    Knight Arts Challenge winner Circ X cabaret hits the stage this summer

    Published June 8, 2015 by

    A booming voice backed by bass envelops the stage as Circ X dancers contort their bodies. Above, acrobats soar with gymnastic ease. By comparison, the sometimes risqué soundtrack seems tame. This is just a peek into the wild world of Circ X. Following a set of sold-out shows last fall, Circ X returns this summer with another series of provocative performances. The troupe, established in Miami in 2002, features a collection of varied performers, ranging from jugglers to burlesque dancers, working to create a local platform for creative risk. With such a large crew, director Diana Lozano faced many challenges in putting together a cohesive project. Knight Foundation’s support—Circ X was a 2013 Knight Arts Challenge winner—has helped to ease a sizable share of her non-creative concerns. “With over a 30-person cast, crew and creative team, one of the greatest challenges in putting on this type of production is the cost involved,” Lozano said. “Normally Circ X is hired by corporate clients to provide entertainment for events and private parties. However, as artists at heart we wanted to produce something that was independent from the corporate dollar.”
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    Sunday solace from the summer heat

    Published June 6, 2015 by

    The members of the Delray String QUartet with the composer Richard Danielpour It shouldn’t surprise, but it does, that on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when the beach and outdoor activities become a logical priority, a chamber music concert would draw an audience as large – and as comforting to a music lover - as the one that came together at the Biltmore Hotel’s Alhambra Ballroom for another evening of the Mainly Mozart Festival. The world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s String Quartet No. 7 (Psalms of Solace), performed by the Delray String Quartet and soprano Maria Aleida, was the evening’s pièce de resistance. One of the most prolific of American composers in all musical genres, Danielpour is specially known for his chamber pieces, which grant preeminence to the human voice as an expressive vehicle. Examples are Margaret Garner (an opera), Songs of Solitude and War Songs (both written for baritone Thomas Hampson), Elegies (in memory of Frederica von Stade’s father) and American Requiem, whose publication coincided with the 9/11 attacks. Born in New York of Iranian parents who fled their country when the shah was overthrown, Danielpour has preserved his emotional links to Iran and describes himself as “an American composer with Persian memory.” References to the oppressed and the brave pervade his entire oeuvre, especially his quartets, which carry such meaningful titles as Requiem, Shadow Dances, Apparitions, Addio, Psalms of Sorrow and Psalms of Solace. The last contains lyrics in Hebrew and English taken from Psalms 40 and 96, the Book of Isaiah and the Gospel according to Luke. A somber, accessible piece, it is suffused with mourning through the first three movements, then achieves resolution in the fourth, thanks to a serene vocal line that overpowers the strings, bringing in liberating light in the final verse: “The kingdom of God is within you.” The work enables the various string instruments to show off in succession and ends with the inclusion of voice as the fifth string. Maria Aleida’s voice came through clear and sparkling, differentiating itself from the framework created by the violins, viola and cello. It should be noted that the Delray ensemble is currently recording the a series of Danielpour quartets.
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    Bringing Detroit voices to the silver screen at Cinetopia

    Published June 5, 2015 by

    Above: Sultan Sharrief When I first heard in 2014 that our Cinetopia Film Festival would be expanding to Detroit with support from the Knights Arts Challenge my first thought was, “what is that going to look like?” As a filmmaker and board member for The Michigan Theater, I’ve been to most of the major film festivals over the last few years. My film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010, then went to 21 other festivals.  Since then my annual circuit of festivals includes Traverse City, Toronto, Sundance, South By Southwest and Tribeca.  What I learned is that there is no “right way” to do a film festival, but the good ones always find a way to maintain and highlight their city’s charm while showcasing great films, panels, interactive events and parties. So I wondered what a festival taking place in Detroit and Ann Arbor amidst all the change our region is currently experiencing would look like.  How would we meet that challenge? As I got more involved with the planning of the 2014 festival, I realized the importance of including a representation of the diverse stories of our region, from the point of view of those living those stories. As someone who travels regularly (and more often than not wearing a Detroit Tigers cap) people are always asking me, “What the heck is going on in Detroit?” They then launch into stories of houses bought for a dollar, community gardens on every corner, wildlife taking over the city, bankruptcy, and so on. It seems what stays with people are the crazy headlines, not the reality. They also don’t realize how regional “Detroit” actually is. When we think of Chicago we think of Chicagoland – the greater Chicago area. But outside of Michigan, people just see the D represented as only the inner city. I realized that we have an opportunity with this festival – which includes both Detroit and Ann Arbor – to  find a way to address this. To find a way to create some new Detroit stories.
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    Film festival builds a community of indie film lovers

    Published June 5, 2015 by

    Detroit isn’t exactly a hotbed of independent cinema. While there is a handful of “art house” theatres that serve more adventurous viewers, many films never make it to the local market. A film festival in its fourth year hopes to establish a cultural touchstone that satisfies cinephiles and whets the appetite of moviegoers who can get much closer to the people behind the films, whether actors or directors. Cinetopia International Film Festival, which kicks off June 5 in Detroit, is also an experiment in sharing between Ann Arbor and Detroit – cities not so far apart geographically but eons apart demographically. “Detroit is the mother of us,” says Russ Collins, Cinetopia’s director and one of the forces behind the festival’s expansion into Detroit two years ago. “This deserves to be in Detroit along with the Jazz Festival and the Grand Prix, events that cross genres and passions.” Cinetopia began in Ann Arbor, at the Michigan Theater, where Collins serves as CEO and executive director. With a two-year, $50,000 Knight Foundation Arts Challenge grant in 2013, organizers were able to partner with the Detroit Film Theatre to bring films to a few venues in Detroit. And the festival has drawn more people and added more screens and sponsors as it has spread to local movie houses in Detroit and suburbs. This year, 72 films will get 150 screenings – or 50 percent more screenings than last year. The films – animated and live-action features, shorts, documentaries from the U.S., United Kingdom, Poland, Indonesia, India and other countries – are fresh from festivals like Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, Cannes and Toronto. Most of them will not be widely released. Along with the original screening venues in Detroit – the Film Theatre, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and the College for Creative Studies, showings will be held in a few commercial theaters in Detroit and at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, which will screen shorts that celebrate Arab women in film, and four outdoor venues.