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    Building a better democracy with civic tech

    Published April 15, 2015 by

    Check out the Storify from the event here. I was in New York Tuesday to attend the Omidyar Network’s conference on civic tech sustainability at the new Civic Hall. I was part of a panel on funding civic tech, with Shaun Abrahamson, Stacy Donohue, Beth Engel and Sarayu Srinivasan. In preparing for the panel I sketched out the notes below about how we approach civic tech at Knight Foundation. At Knight, we care about ensuring that people have access to the news and information that they need to lead their lives in a democracy. As the traditional mechanisms of news delivery and consumption change, we’re working to help support and understand new approaches for building and maintain an informed citizenry. In our Media Innovation program, we’re particularly interested in how the American experiment with democracy can be perfected through new digital tools and behaviors. We believe the Internet opens up opportunities to improve the ways in which citizens can work with their government, and vice versa.
  • Article

    Taking Back Detroit

    Published April 15, 2015 by

    Read the original National Geographic article and view the photos here. Kenneth Morgan, a Gulf War veteran, returned to Detroit four years ago after 30 years away. He left when he was nine years old, traveling the world with his military father, but chose to settle his family in Detroit because, he says, “it’s home. There’s no place like home.” Morgan, his wife, Robin, and their children, Gary Effler and Kenneth D. and Korey Morgan, are renovating a duplex they bought on the East Side for $1,800 plus back taxes. “I figure if I can fight for my country, I can definitely fight for my city.” © Wayne Lawrence/National Geographic (The above image appears in the May issue of National Geographic magazine.) Detroit is one of 26 Knight communities, places where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers. The following is excerpted from the May issue of National Geographic magazine. Read the full story on the National Geographic website. “ONCE DETROIT WAS the Paris of the Midwest, with its broad river, grand boulevards, and historically significant architecture. It became the Motor City, assembling most of the world’s automobiles, and the Arsenal of Democracy, manufacturing World War II armaments. Steady work and union wages meant an autoworker could own a home, plus a boat, maybe even a cottage. Some say America’s middle class was born in Detroit, but Motown most certainly was.
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    Making poetry from the pain of war

    Published April 15, 2015 by

    Teo Castellanos, far right, leads a spoken word workshop for veterans. Photo by Edward Davis/MDC Live Arts. As readers, listeners, viewers or creators, we often turn to art to transmute pain into beauty, to find clarity in our darkness, to explain ourselves. Sometimes a work of art might start with a simple need.  For a veteran, it might be an answer to a silent question: how do you tell your neighbor what it was like to live with unspeakable violence, fear and death, in an unknowable place, half way around the world?  Or, how do you tell it to yourself? Those questions are at the heart of Live Arts Veterans’ Lab Showcase: “Conscience Under Fire,” a spoken word performance presented by MDC Live Arts at the Betsy Hotel, Miami Beach, on April 19, as part of the O, Miami Poetry Festival. Loosely structured in three parts — childhood, service and post-service life — the event is the culmination of The Live Arts Veterans’ Lab, a creative writing and storytelling workshop led by Knight Challenge winner, actor, writer and director Teo Castellanos. The event is part of an MDC Live Arts’  challenge-winning initiative focused on veterans.
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    46 ideas advance in Knight News Challenge: Elections

    Published April 14, 2015 by

    Today, we are excited to announce that 46 projects have moved to the next stage of consideration in Knight News Challenge: Elections. These semifinalists, who include one private submission, will have a week to fine-tune their entries before we begin work with a group of advisers to choose the finalists. We received 1,056 submissions for the challenge, which centered on the question: How might we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during and after elections?
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    Dancing in the desert: YoungArts Salon screening spotlights the social power of art

    Published April 14, 2015 by

    The crowd at the YoungArts Salon. Getty Images/Aaron Davidson. It’s hard to imagine listening to “Louie Louie” as a subversive activity or practicing Michael Jackson’s moonwalk or Rudolf Nureyev’s steps as a crime. But in 2009, under a theocratic government of the Islamic Republic of Iran that faced a critical election, these were punishable offenses. These were not mere paper laws. The Basij, a paramilitary force, was at the ready to administer the punishment — and punish it did with terrifying efficiency. Such is the setting of “Desert Dancer,” a film based on the true story of Afshin Ghaffarian, a young, self-taught dancer who, passionate about the art form, organized an underground dance group in Tehran. The film opens nationally Friday, April 17.
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    Ahead of Give Local America, 7 trends in Giving Days

    Published April 14, 2015 by

      A school principal rides a zipline as a way to bring attention to Give to the Max Day in Minnesota. Courtesy of GiveMN Day.  With the clock ticking for Give Local America on May 5, community foundations and others are finalizing plans for this national day of online giving. At Knight Foundation, we’ve been providing insights on organizing successful Giving Days, and wanted to share the latest information we have gathered. Our work started with The Giving Day Playbook, a soup-to-nuts guide that is continuously updated. Today, we wanted to share insights from six 2014 Fall Giving Days supported by Knight. Our interest is not just on democratizing philanthropy, as essential as that is. While we’re excited by new trends in donor activity, that I’ll outline below, we also want to make sure that community foundations find ways to make these campaigns sustainable for themselves.
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    An intimate Mahler sung by renowned soloists graces Seraphic Fire’s Song of the Earth

    Published April 13, 2015 by

    April is being kind to conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley. First, an interview and a great review of Seraphic Fire’s latest CD appeared in this month’s issue of the prestigious classical music magazine Gramophone. Then, he is scheduled to conduct the chamber version (started by Arnold Schoenberg and finished by Rainer Riehn) of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) next Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 17-20. The latter is both a source of satisfaction and a challenge because of the soloists’ fame and because it involves tackling a work the New Orleans native has long cherished, though it departs from his usual repertoire. The project is enticing and a step up for the founder and artistic director of the choral chamber ensemble that has been twice nominated for an Emmy. The program will combine a famous Bach cantata in the first part with the Mahler- Schoenberg-Riehn Das Lied von der Erde in the second. Mahler’s monumental song, his “tenth symphony,” was exquisitely reduced for chamber by Schoenberg and Riehn, who captured the elegance and Oriental sensibility of the ancient Chinese poems that inspired the composer in 1907. Quigley spoke passionately about the concert that will provide a perfect ending to Seraphic Fire’s season thanks to the participation of the distinguished mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer and Brian Hymel, the most sought-after American tenor of the moment. How did you manage to hire two soloists of the caliber of tenor Bryan Hymel and mezzo Susanne Mentzer?
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    Smart City Startups, eMerge Americas conference and more on the horizon in Miami

    Published April 13, 2015 by

    Photo by Flickr user Timothy Valentine.  This post has been updated. We have a terrific lineup of events this month in Miami that are supported by Knight Foundation, including Smart City Startups, which just added more $15 tickets for its showcase and demo. Also, please join us for the second annual eMerge Americas global tech conference from May 1-5 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.   And don’t forget that the deadline to submit your ideas for Singularity University’s Global Impact Challenge is April 17. The Knight-supported competition seeks ideas that address the question: How would you solve South Florida’s sea level rise challenge and improve the lives of millions of people in three to five years by using technology? Apply here for a chance to win full tuition to Singularity University’s 10-week Graduate Studies Program in Silicon Valley this summer.
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    Detroit house guests create an album for the Motor City

    Published April 13, 2015 by

    Detroit house guest and musician Dorit Chrysler. Courtesy of ADULT. The Knight Arts Challenge Detroit is accepting applications through 11:59 p.m. tonight, April 13, for the best local ideas for the arts. Here, writer Mary Chapman caught up with past winners of the electro band ADULT. Detroit, with its vast stretches of quietude, is decidedly unshowy. But looks, as they say, are deceiving. In this case, they belie a rich arts scene that's vibrant and growing. It just helps to know where to look. In this case, it’s the New Center area, where Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus, a husband and wife electro-music duo, enjoy this diverse historic district north of downtown. Its mostly quiet, tree-lined streets are a mixture of older houses and modern condos and townhomes.
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    Theater in 15 minutes? Sí, please.

    Published April 10, 2015 by

    Courtesy of CCE. In the age of Twitter and flash fiction, the notion of theater offering 15-minute plays was perhaps inevitable. But add to it fresh writing, well-known actors intrigued by short-form theater, the intimacy of a small room and a cheap ticket price and you got yourself Micro Teatro Miami — and a South Florida hit. It´s a brilliant concept set in motion because a whorehouse in Madrid went out of business. Spanish producer Jorge Monje, a charter member of the group that started Micro Teatro in  2009, recalled recently that the initial project began when a developer trying to rehab a particularly bad Madrid neighborhood offered a group of theater people a building that had been a whorehouse. The group turned every room into a mini-theater, each presenting a different 15-minute play. As a sort of an in-joke, and a sly nod to the building’s previous incarnation, the project was called Micro Teatro por Dinero (Micro Theater for Money.)
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    Five grant-making lessons from the rise of NewsU

    Published April 10, 2015 by

    I’m in St. Petersburg, Fla., at the 10th birthday of News University, celebrating the more than 325,000 journalists, students, teachers and communicators who have signed up to use it and get better. We once thought the target for registered users should be 1,200. Really. But more on that later. In 2003, Knight Foundation gave its first grant to The Poynter Institute for what eventually became News University. We thought e-learning could help grow journalism education and training. Companies such as Microsoft were teaching online. But the news industry lagged behind. We worried about journalists stuck out in the middle of nowhere, no good schools around, no newsroom training at all, no money for conferences. At the same time, Knight wanted a long-term Poynter partnership. Journalists liked Poynter. Its website was popular, averaging 34,000 daily visitors. (I crowed about that traffic! Had I looked beyond journalist-to-journalist sites, I would have realized it was not all that great.) Lesson No. 1: Get out of the box.
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    Poynter’s NewsU reimagined: Training for anyone, anytime, anywhere

    Published April 10, 2015 by

    Vicki Krueger is director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute, where she manages News University, an online journalism and media training program that launched in 2005 due to funding from Knight Foundation, which has provided substantial ongoing support. For a decade, journalists and the educators who teach aspiring ones have turned to Poynter’s News University to acquire the skills they need in an ever-changing digital media landscape. With funding from Knight Foundation, NewsU was created to offer journalism training to anyone, anytime, anywhere. NewsU now boasts more than 325,000 registered users in 200 countries and territories, 400 courses, 70 training partners and modules in seven languages. But it’s time to push further as disruption continues to reshape how people access and use information. As we look to our next 10 years, it’s time to rethink NewsU and how it can unleash the power of new platforms with new tools and new technologies. It’s time to expand NewsU’s capacity to help train journalists and others who share news and information worldwide. It’s time to create the next generation of e-learning in scalable, shareable and adaptable ways that reach a global audience.
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    Eight lessons for Miami’s entrepreneurs and investors

    Published April 9, 2015 by

    Marco Giberti, right, a Latin American angel investor and entrepreneur, with serial entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson. Photo by Jenna Buehler. The growth in Miami’s startup ecosystem over the last five years compelled Ola Ahlvarsson, a Sweden-based investor and serial entrepreneur, to immerse himself in the creative energy of South Florida, where he already had a second home. Wednesday night, he was the featured speaker at the Brainfood Mentor Talk Series hosted at The LAB Miami. The series is supported by Knight Foundation and Endeavor Miami, the first U.S. affiliate of a global nonprofit that helps foster high-impact entrepreneurship.
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    Angie Haze Project coming to Akron Civic Theatre

    Published April 9, 2015 by

    According to Val Renner, programming director of the Akron Civic Theatre, the Angie Haze Project is the “epitome of one of the success stories” for the theater. One of the Akron Civic's aims under its Knight Arts grant is to bring in and promote local talent. Last year, when the...