In 2008, Knight Foundation launched the Knight Arts Challenge in Miami, a five-year, $40 million initiative to support the most innovative and transformational arts ideas in South Florida. Since then, 78 grants have been awarded to a range of projects, everything from live concerts to ballet, film festivals and opera performances. In November, we’ll announce the 2011 Challenge winners, marking the initiative’s fourth year.

As we approach this milestone, we’re going to be taking a deeper look at the contest’s impact to date on the Miami community. We’ve partnered with AEA consulting, one of the world’s leading cultural consulting firms, to assess the extent to which the Challenge has selected and nurtured high impact projects, helped attract new capital into the arts through its matching-grant requirement, and contributed to the overall vibrancy of the cultural sector. We hope that this interim review will provide winners and individuals involved in the arts with useful insights, and provide us with feedback to help strengthen the initiative.

The Challenge was conceived as a way to draw out and amplify good ideas about the arts from the community, showcase the best and invest in them. In short, it was hoped that a community-wide contest, open to everyone, would fuel Miami’s zeitgeist. In the assessment, we’ll be taking a look at the extent to which the Challenge has contributed to the growing momentum in the arts sector – by engaging residents who were new to the arts, helping Miami become a more supportive place for artists to live and work, and bringing together diverse communities.

We’re going to be conducting interviews and surveying winners, finalists, applicants and sector leaders to hear directly from the community about the impact of the contest. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing our findings in a series of blog posts, and releasing the interim assessment results in the fall.

As we get the assessment underway, we’re interested in ways you think we should be reviewing the contest or the kinds of questions you think we should be asking. If you have any ideas that you’d like to share with us, please get in touch.

Crossposted from KnightArts.org