DETROIT – Oct. 25, 2017 – Emerging from close to 900 submissions, 29 ideas were named winners of the 2017 Knight Arts Challenge, a community-wide initiative funding the best ideas for engaging and enriching Detroit through the arts. The $1.87 million in funding will enable Detroiters to share their stories through the arts, and lift up the voices of their fellow residents living across the city’s many neighborhoods.
Knight Foundation announced the winning ideas at an awards celebration at the Fillmore Detroit Wednesday night. They join more than 200 past winners that reflect the broad range of artistic disciplines and cultural traditions found across the city.
Whether they are creating an artist residency on a front porch in Southwest Detroit, or a Moroccan-style riad, or community courtyard, in the North End, winners are inviting the community to participate in artistic experiences. In addition, winners will highlight the views of Iraqi-American poets on their adopted city of Detroit, explore the intersection of baseball and art, fuse opera with modern vocal forms, and create an all-female mariachi ensemble.
“Inventive and ambitious, these winners are an example of the fantastic things that can happen when the arts community develops its own authentic vison, and tells its community’s stories,” said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at Knight Foundation. “Just like the winners of the past four years before them, these ideas bring the arts more deeply into cities while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”
The Knight Arts Challenge is open to anyone. Applicants must follow only three rules: 1) The idea must be about the arts; 2) The project must take place in or benefit Detroit; 3) The grant recipient must find funds to match Knight’s commitment.
“When we look for trends in the proposals that succeed each year, we find that the ideas have only gotten more diverse, fueled by Detroit’s legacy of creative innovation and the city’s proven ability to get out and hustle to make it happen,” said Katy Locker, Detroit program director for Knight Foundation. “The challenge continues to succeed because it is powered by the passion of Detroiters to ensure that this arts community maintains an active and vital role in the city.”
Knight Foundation funds the arts because of their ability to inspire communities and connect people to each other and to their city. The challenge is part of a two- pronged strategy that supports established arts institutions to help them better engage the public and funds grassroots initiatives of individual artists and organizations so that everyone has a chance to make their idea a reality.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
Knight Arts Challenge Detroit 2017 Winning Ideas
a.gen.cy
Recipient: a.gen.cy
Award: $66,000
To create an artist-directed advertising agency that markets critical thinking and curiosity instead of consumerism
Art on the Block – Arte en la Cuadra
Recipient: Amelia Duran
Award: $70,000
To highlight Southwest Detroit’s historical connection to public art with a 10-day mural blitz and arts festival that is reflective of the neighborhood’s cultural identity and heritage
Soapbox Studios: Marginalized voices from the Arab and Arab American Community (Arab Film Festival)
Recipient: Arab American National Museum
Award: $50,000
To showcase films that present the depth of Arab and Arab American culture by expanding the museum’s annual film festival
The Solid Foundation Stilt Dancing Project
Recipient: Ayinde Fondren
Award: $10,000
To foster the African art of stilt dancing through a pilot summer program where children will learn the form’s history, choreography and how to make their own costumes
“The AfroFutures!” Children’s Music Project
Recipient: Bryce Detroit
Award: $30,000
To work with Detroit’s music luminaries to create an Afrofuturist children’s music album that promotes positive cultural identity and ancestral values
Salt City – We the Ones
Recipient: jessica Care moore and Aku Kadogo/Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
Award: $64,000
To create a “blue-collar ballet for a blue-collar city,” a techno-inspired dance and theater production, written by jessica Care moore and directed by Aku Kadogo, about a girl named Salt who has time traveled to Detroit in 2071 and can’t find her people
Cine Mexico Now
Recipient: Cinema Lamont
Award: $25,000
To bring together cinephiles and the city’s Mexican community with a film festival of award-winning contemporary Mexican cinema
D.Cipher
Recipient: Wayne Ramocan, Allandra Bulger and Dominque Campbell / D.Cipher
Award: $30,000
To help artists share the knowledge that can grow their careers and help them participate in Detroit’s growing economy through this community of independent music artists
DSO Mobile Maxcast Series
Recipient: Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Award: $36,000
To give Detroiters the ability to enjoy a world-renowned concert right in their neighborhood with the Mobile Maxcast, a billboard truck that broadcasts “Live from Orchestra Hall” in parks and at community centers
Baghdad in Detroit
Recipient: Dunya Mikhail
Award: $12,000
To show Detroit through the eyes of Iraqi-American poets by creating a video that joins together their poems about Detroit and the many communities within the city
Facing Change: Documenting Detroit
Recipient: Facing Change: Documenting America
Award: $150,000
To create a photo essay of the city through a community photojournalism project that pairs emerging photographers with professionals who mentor them in producing a story on Detroit communities
American Riad
Recipient: Ghana ThinkTank and Central Detroit Christian CDC
Award: $135,000
To create a Moroccan-style riad, or community courtyard, in Detroit’s North End, formed by a series of soaring stainless steel arches cut with intricate Islamic patterns
Muse at the Museum
Recipient: Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival
Award: $15,000
To celebrate Detroit artists past and present through a multidisciplinary performance involving a music commission by Detroit-based composer William Banfield inspired by a seminal painting in the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History’s collection by John Thomas Biggers
Black Body
Recipient: Heritage Works
Award: $200,000
To explore historical, mythological and other representations of the body by bringing together choreographers and local artists to co-create new works with the community
Tetra
Recipient: Sherina Sharpe and Chace Morris/House Aquemini
Award: $100,000
To explore stories of personal transformation after tragedy with Tetra, a four-show festival of theater, music, poetry and technology created by Sherina Sharpe and Chace Morris
OperaSoul
Recipient: Kisma Jordan
Award: $50,000
To create a world-class concert experience that seamlessly fuses operatic vocals with various music styles in order to expand the scope of and audience for classical voice performances
Live Coal Arts Mobile
Recipient: Yvette Rock/Live Coal Gallery
Award: $45,000
To bring art into neighborhoods, particularly Brightmoor and North End/Piety Hill, through a transformed 18-foot trailer that doubles as a mobile gallery and a space for art-making workshops
Mariachi Femenil Detroit
Recipient: Mariachi Femenil Detroit
Award: $15,000
To flip the script on the male-dominated mariachi genre by creating a female mariachi ensemble for Detroit
Take Me Out to the Opera
Recipient: Michigan Opera Theatre
Award: $45,000
To explore the intersection of sports and art with a production of “The Summer King,” an opera based on the life of Negro League baseball star Josh Gibson, accompanied by community programming centered on the stories of groundbreaking African-American artists and athletes who paved the way for integration in their fields
BackStage Technical Theatre Training Program
Recipient: Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit
Award: $125,000
To train more minorities for careers in theater by teaching youth to work backstage in carpentry, sound engineering and lighting design
Spreading the Elements Everywhere in Detroit (S.E.E.D.)
Recipient: Motor City Street Dance Academy
Award: $35,000
To engage youth in the arts through a dance studio and mentorship program focused on hip-hop and breakdancing
Snotty Kids Invade the Gay Bar: Detroit Punk History – Reissued/Unreleased Music and More
Recipient: Rob St. Mary
Award: $15,000
To document the city’s punk scene – chiefly 1977-83 – and its place in music history with an interactive website featuring interviews, photos and videos in addition to special vinyl record reissues and unreleased compilations
Pressing On: Making Visible an Unseen Detroit
Recipient: Signal-Return
Award: $25,000
To elevate the work of nonprofits by pairing 12 organizations with Detroit artists who will turn the organizations’ uplifting stories into art through custom letterpress posters
When It All Changed, A Virtual Reality High School Tour
Recipient: Sultan Sharrief/Street Cred Detroit Youth Crew
Award: $42,000
To spark conversations about empathy and race by touring an interactive performance where students use virtual reality to put themselves in the shoes of a 16-year-old Detroit student who witnesses violence in her community
Spring
Recipient: Tiff Massey
Award: $200,000
To provide a place for reflection and gathering on the grounds of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History with a site-specific sculpture called SPRING, named for the season in which Detroit comes alive
Art and Architecture: Changing Our Cities Through Our Youth
Recipient: Tiffany Brown/Urban Arts Collective
Award: $50,000
To increase diversity in architecture by having a team of architectural designers raised in the city’s toughest neighborhoods return to those areas to teach kids design skills that will encourage them to change their community
Fredy Perlman and the Detroit Printing Co-op
Recipient: Danielle Aubert/Wayne State University
Award: $12,000
To explore the connection between politics and printing by publishing a book on the work of Fredy Perlman and friends at the Detroit Print Co-op, which produced noteworthy and beautifully-designed leftist publications in the city between 1970 and 1980
Framed by WDET – Collection Showcase
Recipient: WDET
Award: $23,000
To share and preserve the stories of Detroit’s diverse communities – from Hamtramck’s Bangladeshi dress shop owners to long-time Detroiters sustaining the city’s rich blues legacy – by creating an exhibit and printed book that highlight the best of the audiovisual installations from arts challenge-funded project “Framed by WDET”
The Porch on TAP
Recipient: Young Nation
Award: $135,000
To transform the organization’s “front porch” into space for cultural exchange by inviting national and international artists for short-term residencies in which they connect with the community, perform, display work or conduct workshops on the porch of Young Nation’s new plaza adjacent to The Alley Project in southwest Detroit
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Contacts:
Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646
Peter Van Dyke, CEO, Van Dyke Horn Public Relations, 313-872-2202