MIAMI – Dec. 1, 2014 – From the fields of South Miami-Dade to the streets of Hialeah, Downtown Miami and Doral, 47 ideas will bring the arts into communities across South Florida with $2.29 million from the Knight Arts Challenge.
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“Announcing the 2014 winners of the South Florida Knight Arts Challenge” by Tatiana Hernandez on KnightArts
A program of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the challenge funds the best ideas for bringing South Florida together through the arts.
The 2014 winners are mainly small arts organizations, collectives and individual artists. Their diverse ideas range from launching an artist-in-residency program over the water at Stiltsville, setting traditional Indian dance to the rhythms of Afro-Cuban poetry and presenting a play based on the stories of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
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All of the winners answered a question posed by Knight Foundation earlier this year: What’s your best idea for the arts?
“Our aspiration continues to be to make art general in Miami. We are thrilled with the progress to date and continue to fund both key arts institutions and the Knight Arts Challenge. Together, they engage, inspire and bring us together through arts and culture,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight Foundation.
With challenge funding, the 2014 winners will:
Strengthen literary culture with a new publishing house for Miami works, a pop-up store for art books and a “Super Bowl of Poetry” competition in Broward and Miami-Dade schools;
Highlight South Florida’s many cultures with a youth institute for learning Haitian rara music, a new dance piece on the contributions of Cubans who came to Miami during the Mariel boatlift, and a showcase for artists in the Caribbean avant-garde;
Activate spaces in Downtown Miami with roving musicians who perform at public plazas, a music series in the lobby of the Olympia Theater at Gusman Center and by opening up Trinity Episcopal Cathedral for community concerts.
“Many of these winners aren’t just presenting art. They are engaging South Floridians in its creation and evolution, and opening up their organizations to the public in a way that will help make us a stronger community,” said Dennis Scholl, vice president of arts for Knight Foundation.
The full list of winners and their project ideas is below. More information is available at KnightArts.org.
In addition, the Key West Art and Historical Society was named the winner of the Knight Arts Challenge People’s Choice Award, the culmination of a text-to-vote campaign this fall. The Monroe County organization was one of six small arts organizations up for $20,000, which is in addition to their Knight Arts Challenge grant and can be used for the artistic project of their choice. Knight created the People’s Choice Award to bring attention to small and emerging arts groups and their contributions to the city.
Now in its seventh year, the Knight Arts Challenge has only three rules for applying: 1) The idea must be about the arts; 2) The project must take place in or benefit South Florida; 3) The grant recipients must find funds to match Knight’s commitment. The best receive Knight Foundation funds.
Knight has received more than 8,900 ideas from the South Florida community since launching the challenge in 2008. In total, 241 projects have received almost $25 million in funding.
Since 2006, Knight Foundation has invested more than $86 million in South Florida’s cultural community. Those funds have launched a new media program that includes the signature “Wallcasts” at the acclaimed New World Symphony campus, helped present Ibero-American films at the Miami International Film Festival, and are bringing every Miami-Dade third-grader to the new Pérez Art Museum Miami, among other projects. The approach is two-pronged: Knight Foundation aims to open up institutions to more South Floridians with large grants, while the Arts Challenge ensures that smaller, grassroots efforts fuel and refresh the arts scene.
For more on Knight Foundation’s arts initiative and to view a full list of Knight Arts Challenge winners, visit www.KnightArts.org. Connect on the Knight Arts Challenge Facebook page here and via @knightarts and #knightarts on Twitter.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit KnightFoundation.org.
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Contact: Anusha Alikhan, director of communications, 305-908-2677, [email protected]
2014 Knight Arts Challenge Winners
Recipient: Amanda Keeley
Award: $50,000
To promote the visual arts with a pop-up artist’s bookstore that travels around Miami
Recipient: Andrew Yeomanson (DJ Le Spam)
Award: $35,000
To celebrate the art of analog recording by improving a studio that allows local musicians to record on vintage equipment or preserve their works currently cataloged on older formats
Recipient: Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE)
Award: $60,000
To bring a bit of the Everglades into the city by creating billboards emblazoned with large-scale, artful images of the South Florida outdoors
Recipient: BFI (Bas Fisher Invitational)
Award: $150,000
To raise the profile of Miami artists by hosting a global gallery swap in which shows from BFI will be exchanged with galleries around the world
Recipient: Bookleggers
Amount: $30,000
To bring literature to more people by expanding a community mobile library that provides books for free, for trade or by donation
Recipient: Books & Books
Award: $80,000
To bring more great literature into more homes by streaming and archiving Books & Books’ author events featuring noted writers
Recipient: Buskerfest Miami!
Award: $10,000
To enhance civic life by cultivating a street performance culture in Miami through an annual festival and ongoing series
Recipient: Cannonball
Award: $150,000
To support innovative, artist-driven projects in Miami by expanding its microgrants program to visual artists
Recipient: Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana
Award: $50,000
To provide an intimate cultural experience by expanding its Microtheater program, which produces short plays for small audiences in confined spaces
Recipient: City of Doral
Award: $60,000
To enhance artistic offerings in West Miami-Dade by offering classical music, dance, exhibitions, art films and more in Downtown Doral Park
Recipient: Community Arts and Culture
Amount: $40,000
To celebrate world music by expanding the Afro Roots World Music Festival to three days and host it in a variety of neighborhoods around Miami-Dade County
Recipient: Elizabeth Cerejido
Award: $60,000
To launch an artist exchange program that brings together Cuban artists from Havana and Miami to present exhibitions, in partnership with local universities
Recipient: FATVillage Arts District
Award: $80,000
To promote cutting-edge contemporary art by expanding the reach of Fort Lauderdale’s FATVillage Projects Contemporary Art Space, which provides a home for artists to create and present experimental work
Recipient: Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts (FETA)
Award: $15,000
To highlight new music in the Americas through an experimental electronic music and sound art series
Recipient: Hialeah Contemporary Culture Project (HICCUP)
Award: $15,000
To support a Hialeah-based collective featuring artists whose works transcend the exhibition space and engage the surrounding city
Recipient: HistoryMiami
Award: $150,000
To showcase Miami through images by creating a photography center at the museum focused on curating exhibitions and engaging the community in documenting life in South Florida.
Recipient: IFE-ILE
Award: $15,000
To strengthen Afro-Cuban culture in Miami through the company’s dance festival, which hosts workshops and performances reflecting the diversity of the African diaspora.
Recipient: inkub8
Award: $30,000
To provide professional artists a place to create new works in a lab space at the organization’s Wynwood studio
Recipient: Jai-Alai Books
Award: $40,000
To create an aesthetic voice for Miami by launching a literary publishing house
Recipient: Jason Taylor Foundation
Award: $50,000
To bring the “Super Bowl of poetry” to Broward County through a friendly poetry competition that unites South Florida students through spoken word
Recipient: Key West Art & Historical Society
Award: $15,000
To unite Key West through a kinetic sculpture parade, in which artists, bike riders and the community co-create a wacky display of art on wheels
Recipient: Letter 16 Press
Award: $20,000
To recapture South Florida’s cultural history by digitizing the work of talented Miami photographers from the 1970s and ’80s and publishing it in a book series
Recipient: Little Haiti Cultural Center
Award: $50,000
To preserve Haitian rara, a form of festival music used in street processions, by creating a youth rara institute where teens can learn to play and make traditional instruments
Recipient: Live in Color Dance Collective
Award: $20,000
To further develop South Florida’s distinct brand of urban funk dance by training young artists and providing them with opportunities to perform
Recipient: Mexican American Council
Award: $60,000
To celebrate Mexican culture by creating a children’s mariachi academy in South Miami-Dade
Recipient: Miami Center for Architecture & Design (MCAD)
Award: $15,000
To inspire new ideas by bringing artists and architects together through a lecture series
Recipient: MDC Live Arts
Award: $50,000
To share the stories of modern-day veterans and their families through a season-long initiative featuring a multimedia performance, exhibition and veteran arts engagement program.
Recipient: Miami Music Project
Award: $75,000
To enhance music instruction at Miami’s only El Sistema-modeled orchestral program by implementing a new Teaching Artists Training Program for professional artists.
Recipient: Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
Award: $75,000
To commemorate the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center’s 40th anniversary by presenting events where prominent artist alums share their talents with today’s students
Recipient: Museum of Fashion
Award: $25,000
To celebrate the art of fashion by strengthening a new museum collection that highlights vintage couture
Recipient: Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies
Award: $15,000
To preserve the experience of viewing vintage films by expanding the Cosford Classics series at Cosford Cinema
Recipient: Nu Deco Ensemble
Award: $75,000
To provide innovative concert experiences by supporting a new ensemble offering a hybrid of music and multimedia performances
Recipient: Oliver Sanchez
Award: $15,000
To support Swampspace, an alternative exhibition space for local artists and musicians in Miami’s Design District
Recipient: Olympia Theater at Gusman Center
Award: $50,000
To infuse downtown Miami with the arts by expanding an arts series in the lobby of the Olympia Theater
Recipient: Opa-locka Community Development Corp.
Award: $100,000
To re-envision Opa-locka as a cultural destination by engaging the community to transform a street into a large-scale public art project
Recipient: Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science
Award: $15,000
To create a performance series that mixes 20th-century science and science fiction films with musical improvisation and multimedia presentations
Recipient: Pioneer Winter / Pioneer Winter Collective
Award: $20,000
To engage local choreographers in creating site-specific works in nontraditional spaces that are free to all
Recipient: Ranjana Warier
Award: $35,000
To celebrate Miami’s many cultures by setting traditional Indian dance to the rhythms of Adrian Castro’s Afro-Caribbean poetry
Recipient: Sound and Vision
Award: $10,000
To foster innovation in the arts by bringing creatives together for weekly meetings to share work, perform material and challenge artistic boundaries through technology
Recipient: Stiltsville Trust
Award: $25,000
To give local artists more access to the seven remaining historic houses of Stiltsville by creating an aquatic-inspired arts incubator and residency program
Recipient: The Children’s Voice Chorus
Award: $25,000
To enrich the lives of children in South Miami-Dade’s migrant farming communities by providing transportation to the Children’s Voice Chorus program in Palmetto Bay
Recipient: The Screening Room
Award: $25,000
To bring high-quality video installations and film screenings to more South Floridians by supporting programming at the Screening Room in Wynwood
Recipient: Third Horizon Media
Award: $50,000
To raise the profile of Caribbean artists in Miami by staging showcases featuring the work of cutting-edge filmmakers, musicians and visual artists
Recipient: Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
Award: $30,000
To provide a space for up-and-coming musical talent to perform by opening up Downtown Miami’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral for a concert series
Recipient: University of Florida, College of Fine Arts, School of Music
Award; $75,000
To showcase Brazilian culture by supporting the University of Florida’s Brazilian Music Institute to be presented in South Florida at Broward College and at the Ralph R. Bailey Concert Hall in Davie
Recipient: Village of Pinecrest, Pinecrest Gardens
Award: $75,000
To enable Miami-Dade County students to learn from jazz greats by expanding Pinecrest Gardens’ popular South Motors Jazz Series to include a new mentor program
Recipient: Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival of Music, Art and Dance
Award: $75,000
To bring South Floridians together at a four-day festival, which strives to provide music, workshops and events that nourish both brain and body