PRESS RELEASE
Knight Foundation names 68 finalists in Knight Arts Challenge Miami

MIAMI – Sept. 13, 2016 – Sixty-eight ideas were named finalists today in the Knight Arts Challenge Miami, a community-wide initiative funding the best ideas for the arts in South Florida.

Emerging from nearly 1,000 submissions, the finalists propose a range of projects to help make art general in Miami, a place where high-quality arts and cultural experiences can be found throughout the many neighborhoods. They include creating the country’s only contemporary art gallery in a national park, blending art and technology to engage transit riders, embedding artists in city planning departments and launching a Native-American film festival.

“The Miami of today is radically different from the Miami of 2008 when we first launched this challenge. Artists and cultural organizations have pushed this community to seek high levels of excellence, while continuing to experiment with new ideas. Our belief in this city, and our investment in its people, is born out every day in the performance halls, galleries and streets of Miami, and again by the 68 finalists in this year’s challenge,” said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at Knight Foundation.

A full list of finalists is below and at knightarts.org.  Knight Foundation will announce the winning ideas, which will share $2.5 million, on Nov. 28, 2016.

This is the ninth year of the Knight Arts Challenge Miami, which offers matching funds for the best ideas for the arts. Applicants must follow only three rules: 1) The idea must be about the arts; 2) the project must take place in or benefit South Florida; 3) the grant recipient must find funds to match Knight’s commitment.

Since 2005, Knight Foundation has invested $122 million in the South Florida arts, supporting both large institutions, to help them better engage the public, and smaller, grassroots groups through the challenge. Previous Knight funding for local institutions created a new media program that includes the signature “Wallcasts” at the acclaimed New World Symphony campus, helps present Ibero-American films at the Miami International Film Festival, and is bringing every Miami-Dade third-grader to the Pérez Art Museum Miami. 

For more on Knight Foundation’s arts program, visit knightarts.org or follow Knight Foundation on Facebook, or #knightarts and @knightfdn on Twitter and Instagram.

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.

2016 Knight Arts Challenge Miami Finalists

III Points Festival
To provide a platform for local artists by commissioning them to create large-scale installations on the festival grounds with the prospect of moving them to other locations throughout the year

Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
To introduce South Florida’s hip-hop culture to an international audience by bringing the Breakin’ Convention, a festival of dance and theater, to Miami

Ali Cultural Arts
To expand the presence of women in the audio engineering industry with a training program for young women and girls in a historic Pompano Beach building that once boarded African-American jazz musicians

Alma Dance Theater
To use contemporary dance to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and to engage people afflicted by them

Amir Baradaran
To rethink how people produce knowledge and share memories with a large-scale, participatory art project that uses augmented reality and artificial intelligence

Angel Fraser-Logan Dance Company
To inspire a love of dance by bringing Miami native and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Jamar Roberts to South Florida to mentor and teach students, and to choreograph and perform new work

ArtCenter/South Florida
To bring art into public planning by embedding artists in city governments as part of a residency program that helps to develop solutions to policy concerns

Artists Within Reach Collective
To foster the next generation of artists by having well-known artists offer professional guidance to young creatives by addressing the question, “If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?”

Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRE)
To tell the story of the cultural and ecological forces that shape South Florida by opening a permanent gallery at Everglades National Park’s Ernest Coe Visitor Center, the only space in the country devoted to contemporary art within a national park

The Barnyard
To bring Coconut Grove together with an art and culinary event inspired by Judy Chicago’s famous 1979 art installation, “The Dinner Party”

Bas Fisher Invitational
To experiment with new models for presenting art through Nomadic Miami, a series of roving exhibitions, performances and programs in specific locations determined by cutting-edge artists

Nerissa Street
To train South Florida’s teen girls to become leaders in film and media by immersing them in the production of a short film from script to screening in four weeks

Alexey Taran
To explore the dark side of desire, disorders and inner struggles through an experimental theater performance incorporating artists from both sides of the Florida Straits

Boca Raton Museum of Art
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of Everglades National Park by commissioning glass artist Koen Vanmechelen to meet with residents and scientists in South Florida and create an exhibition based on the environmental issues facing the region

The Bridge
To provide artistic support for musicians by building out an event space and recording room with free production and streaming services

CANVAS Art Charities
To infuse a neighborhood with art with the CANVAS Outdoor Museum, which connects five underused blocks along the West Palm Beach waterfront with installations, including one powered by solar panels that will light the area for nighttime use

Carl Juste
To explore the many layers and similarities between Cuban and Haitian cultures through
a book of photographs and essays, and an accompanying exhibition

CINTAS Foundation
To celebrate Cuban writers through new fellowships in creative writing for Cubans living on the island and in exile

City Theatre
To create a new format for musical theater with the 10-Minute Musical Initiative, a platform for short pieces by the producers of the Summer Shorts series

KROMA
To engage the community in restoring the art installations in Coconut Grove’s Elizabeth Virrick Park to reflect the original vision of architect Kenneth Treister

Combat Hippies
To encourage public conversations about the trauma of war by touring a new spoken word performance based on the stories of local veterans and refugees from the Middle East

Community Justice Project
To engage new audiences in the literary arts by bringing workshops led by poet Aja Monet to grassroots leaders involved in social justice issues

Dana De Greff
To foster a love of words at an early age with PageSlayers, a weeklong summer camp for Opa-locka fourth- and fifth-graders that exposes them to writing beyond the standard school curriculum

Dance NOW! Miami
To engage South Florida audiences with the restaging of “Ritmo Jondo,” a pioneering work of modern dance created in 1953 and set to the music of Catalan composer Carlos Surinach

Dania Beach Creative Arts Council
To enliven neighborhoods and provide employment for artists by creating murals across the city

Design and Architecture High School
To develop the skills of young animators by offering student workshops with local professionals on scriptwriting, storyboarding and more, in addition to screening student films

Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator
To connect Caribbean communities and artists by commissioning 20 artists to spend time in South Florida neighborhoods, conduct community-focused research and create public artworks that respond to people’s stories and histories

Everett Osceola
To highlight the words and works of indigenous peoples by launching the first southeastern Native American film festival

April JAMM Festival
To celebrate jazz by expanding the April jazz festival at a local club to venues around Miami and including master classes and school lectures

Florida International University
To honor Miami’s Cuban heritage by creating cultural exchanges between Havana and Miami guitar orchestras at the Miami International GuitART Festival

Florida International University
To celebrate contemporary approaches to art and design by bringing experts in Germany’s Bauhaus movement and Leonardo da Vinci’s art to present exhibits, lectures and courses in 2019

Fringe Projects
To stretch the bounds of public art by partnering with R&R Studios on BEAUTY FOR ALL!!!, an LED-activated mural in downtown Miami that counteracts the ever-present messages of consumption on signs in the city

Guitars Over Guns
To use art to oppose violence by collaborating with police to melt bullet casings and guns and recast them into musical instruments that will lead a peace rally involving local musicians and artists of all ages and backgrounds

Historic Hampton House Community Trust
To build on the legacy of the Historic Hampton House, the segregation-era motel in Brownsville once home to a popular jazz club, with a music education program for local youth

HistoryMiami
To connect South Floridians to the impact and emotion of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew with a large-scale exhibition on the 25th anniversary of the hurricane’s landfall

Hotbox Art
To create a catalyst for transforming a West Palm Beach historic district by turning the shotgun homes there into spaces for artist residencies and community engagement

IFE-ILE
To link Afro-Cuban culture in Miami and Havana by providing dancers and instructors from the island to participate in a cultural exchange project as part of the group’s annual summer dance festival

Interactive Initiative
To engage neighborhoods in art by transforming building facades with large-scale projections of interactive video and animations by local artists

Juggerknot Theatre Company
To explore Miami’s many layers by presenting immersive, real-time theater experiences in three motel rooms that tell the stories of three of Miami’s emerging neighborhoods

Karen Peterson Dancers
To promote Miami as a leader in inclusive arts by launching the first International Physically Integrated Dance Festival featuring dancers with and without disabilities performing together

Key West Literary Seminar
To instill pride in Florida’s place in American literature by providing a free, five-day summer program for Key West High School students on the literary and cultural history of the island

Sosyete Koukouy
To immerse more South Floridians in Haitian culture by recreating a Haitian village on the streets of Miami where visitors can experience the country’s culture

Locust Projects
To provide artists with the tools they need to do their work by creating a lending library of items such as power tools, a 3-D printer, video production equipment and more

Michael Graves Education Inc.
To heighten public awareness about the importance of the Everglades to Miami’s future with life-size sculptures of endangered animals made through origami

Miami Beach Cinematheque
To bring a rare collection to the community by digitizing and displaying the cinematheque’s archive of film memorabilia and ephemera.

Miami Classical Guitar Society
To elevate Miami’s classical guitar culture through concerts by internationally renowned guitarists, an international competition, educational master classes and live stream of the society’s annual festival

Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
To engage the community in the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s first local performance in a decade, with activities surrounding the event at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

Miami Hispanic Ballet Corp.
To bring a world-class dance experience to Miami’s multicultural audiences through
the International Ballet Festival of Miami, which presents more than 20 companies from around the world in addition to workshops and classes

Miami Light Project
To explore the art of cabaret by bringing the Philadelphia-based Bearded Ladies Cabaret to Miami for workshops that culminate in a performance with local and Philly-based performers

Miami Music Club
To create a space for underground musicians and artists to come together by producing a series of concerts at traditional art spaces

Miami Music Institute
To explore race relations in American history by presenting two operas at the Miami Music Festival, “Appomattox” by Philip Glass and “Let Freedom Sing” by Bruce Adolphe, coupled with community programming

Miami New Drama
To find common ground for diverse audiences by creating bilingual adaptions of classic plays including “Our Town,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Miss Julie” at the Colony Theatre

Nathaniel Sandler
To introduce more people to the collections of museums through essays, tours and events focused on the many interesting items the institutions have but aren’t able to display year round

ProjectArt
To immerse neighborhoods in the arts by placing emerging artists in five libraries where they will have studio space in exchange for teaching arts classes in low-income communities

Children’s Hope Chest of Dreams
To bring the best in African-diaspora cinema to Overtown through a new film series at the Lyric Theater and nearby Gibson Park

Ramiro Almeida
To provoke conversations about downtown Miami today, and what it could be in the future, by building a replica of the area using Legos and having artists exhibit their work throughout it

Reading Queer
To bring more queer voices to South Florida by expanding the annual Reading Queer Literary Festival with a series of main stage performances, writers’ workshops and literary installations

Storefront for Art and Architecture
To demonstrate how South Florida can adapt and flourish in times of rising sea levels by having artists and designers propose solutions at an ideas festival

Rhythm Foundation
To create a cultural dialogue with communities hit by terrorism and war through “Axis of Love,” a concert series featuring instrumental music from conflict zones

RudduR Dance
To inspire the next generation of dancers with a mentorship program that culminates with a site-specific show at a historic landmark

Susan Karie Braun
To connect Miamians through immersive storytelling with “Metronovelas,” a weekly short-film series that “premieres” on Miami-Dade Public Transit when riders cue it using an augmented reality app

Symone Titania
To tell the stories of the barbecue vendors of South Dade’s Goulds neighborhood with a photo documentary project and community celebration

Tarell Alvin McCraney
To create the 305/One Festival, which celebrates the unique storytelling and solo performers coming out of Miami with a series of performances, film screenings and cultural activities

The M Ensemble
To promote a new home for theater in Liberty City, Sandrell Rivers Theater, where M Ensemble will be a resident company, with a yearlong engagement initiative

Torrance Carter
To foster the love and knowledge of film among students by bringing AdHoc Cinema, a traveling film and music series, to local schools

The Screening Room
To expand multimedia artistic programming in Miami through new installations at Wynwood’s The Screening Room

Wifredo Fernandez
To develop a space for creatives in the Overtown/Miami River District that provides lodging, a café, and creative work and commercial space space for artists and entrepreneurs

YoungArts
To showcase artistic talent by expanding the free, outdoor Outside the Box series featuring new and reimagined multidisciplinary mash-ups created by talented YoungArts alumni at the organization’s iconic space

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/.