Photo credit: Michael Bolden One of the most prevalent themes among the 358 entries to this year’s Knight Green Line Challenge was a hunger to improve public spaces in St. Paul, Minn. Applicants longed for more inviting streets and welcoming spaces that encourage lingering with friends and strangers alike. We believe this year’s cohort of 12 winners will help fulfill that need. Several of the winning projects involve rapid prototyping. Jason Roberts and his Better Block wiki-block project – modeled on the WikiHouse movement – will develop the tools for everyone to participate in reshaping their city. Working in coalition with the Friendly Streets Initiative, Team Better Block will generate templates for all types of temporary street furniture, print them at the Science Museum and make them available publicly so that anyone with some time and spare wood can produce their own snap-together creations. The Saint Paul Riverfront Corp. will adapt San Francisco’s successful Market Street Prototyping Festival to St. Paul’s river balcony. An open design competition will source the best ideas to improve public life; they’ll be installed and tested, and the results will help inform a long-term plan for a vibrant civic walkway on the river balcony.

Photo credit: Michael Bolden. After reading every one of the 358 applications submitted for the $500,000 available in the 2015 Knight Green Line Challenge I can safely say that St. Paul isn’t lacking in ideas, or the passionate people who can make them happen. Today we announce the 27 projects that have been selected as finalists in this year’s challenge. The Knight Green Line Challenge seeks to spark community success by making the neighborhoods along the central corridor more vibrant places. Specifically we were looking for projects that tap into the potential of the Green Line to excite current residents – and attract new ones, to bring diverse groups of people together and fuel economic opportunity, and to build and sustain a strong culture of civic engagement. We know that those three drivers are key to St. Paul’s success and we saw a wide range of approaches in the pool of applications. The biggest theme in the applications – and among the finalists – was sparking a more vibrant and inclusive public life. Ideas selected as finalists range from providing, or testing, new spaces for people to mingle, encouraging exploration of local neighborhoods or even sparking a new selfie craze in front of local businesses. The finalists will gather next week with Knight Foundation and Saint Paul Foundation staff to discuss their proposals and receive feedback on why they stood out. They have a couple of weeks to answer additional questions and flesh out their ideas before their final proposals are considered by a panel of expert readers. The readers will review these final proposals on the same criteria as the first round. They’ll be looking for proposals that are innovative for St. Paul and that offer a new approach that could yield promising results. They’ll be looking for proposals that offer an opportunity for learning. They’ll be looking for proposals that the applicant can successfully execute within the 12-month grant period and that have a well-thought-out and reasonable budget. Most of all they’ll be looking for proposals that can leverage the potential of the Green Line and advance the three key drivers of city success mentioned above.

Photo by Michael Hicks on Flickr.com Applications for the 2015 Knight Green Line Challenge are now closed. We received more than 350 ideas for projects that tap into the potential of the Green Line to make surrounding neighborhoods in St. Paul, Minn., more vibrant places to live and work. We saw ideas for each of the six neighborhoods along the line that aimed to push the three key drivers of city success: exciting current residents and attracting newcomers; expanding economic opportunity and breaking down community divides; and creating and strengthening a culture of robust civic engagement. Now, a team of local and national readers will join Knight Foundation and St. Paul Foundation staff in an initial review of applications. They will be looking for ideas that are new and innovative, that could have a strong local impact, that provide an opportunity for learning, and that can be executed successfully by the applicant. We’ll announce the finalists in August. Finalists will receive feedback on their ideas and will need to refine their applications and add detail. The finalist application includes an expanded word limit for the initial questions. Finalists will need to provide a final grant amount and full budget. Finalists will also need to provide a timeline for the project, describe risks or barriers to success, discuss how their project will expand knowledge in the field, share how they will tell their story and explain their plan for sustainability (if the project is intended to be sustained). Finalists also have the opportunity to add a maximum of two letters of support as well as a sketch, photo or illustration. Final applications will be due on Aug. 26. A team of readers will share their expertise with Knight and St. Paul Foundation staff in a detailed review process. We will announce winners of the 2015 Green Line Challenge in late September.

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.