Miami Arts Week started with good news for the whole region, with the announcements of the winners of the 2016 Knights Arts Challenge.
The contest, sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will give $2.78 million to 44 local artists and projects aimed at exploring the authentic voices of South Florida and bringing art to neighborhoods from Key West to Palm Beach. All winners have committed to find funds to match Knight's commitment (it's one of the conditions of the grant).
Victoria Rogers, VP of Arts for the foundation, shared with WLRN some of her thoughts on the challenge and what this year's winners will bring to South Florida's communities:
The beauty about the Knight Arts Challenge is that anybody can apply and it's a nice way of trying to ensure that art is general here in South Florida. So it's a community-wide contest.
Tell me a little bit about about the process of picking the winners.
It starts with a 150-word essay. You submit 150 words online explaining : what's your idea about the arts? Your project has to take place in or benefit South Florida and have a matching grant. So whatever you request from Knight, should you be a winner, you have to raise the matching amount dollar for dollar.
What role does art play in the life of a city? Why is it important? Why should we be putting so much investment in it?
The arts provide vibrancy to a city. Through the arts we are connected to one another. And for us, we firmly believe that a vibrant arts community and vibrant arts ecology in a city helps to create the places where we want to live, the places where we want to raise children, the places where we want to work. So it's through the arts that we gain this really valuable connection to one another. And in any city that I've ever been to, it is that vibrant art scene that sort of creates that magic. So if you think about it the Knight Foundation provides the fuel, but it's the artists that are creating the work.
This Years Winners:
- Breakin’ Convention Miami
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Award: $100,000
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
- “Miss Masters” Audio at the Ali
Award: $60,000
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
- FLESH
Award: $17,000
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
- Alma Dance Theater presents: Flowers for Spring
Award: $15,000
To use contemporary dance to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and to engage people afflicted by them
- Facing the Cloud + reStoring Po{AI}try: A Large-Scale Interactive Public {AR}t Installation
Award: $100,000
To rethink how people produce knowledge and share memories using augmented reality and artificial intelligence in a large-scale participatory art project
- Ailey Dancer Jamar Roberts returns to Miami to Mentor Next Generation of Dance Artists
Angel Fraser-Logan Dance Company
Award: $50,000
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
- Art-in-Public-Life
Award: $35,000
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: Notes to My Younger Self
Artists Within Reach Collective
Award: $60,000
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?”
- AIRIE Nest
Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE)
Award: $50,000
To tell the story of the cultural and ecological forces that shape South Florida by creating an interdisciplinary gallery at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center in the Everglades National Park
- NOMADIC MIAMI: Letting Artists Lead the Way
Award: $300,000
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
- Havana/Haiti: Two Cultures, One Community
Carl Juste
Award: $30,000
Award: Havana/Haiti: Two Cultures, One Community
To explore the many layers and similarities between Cuban and Haitian cultures through a book of photographs and essays, and an accompanying exhibition
- Black Lounge Film Series
Children’s Hope Chest of Dreams
Award: $60,000
To bring the excellence of African-diaspora cinema to Overtown through a new monthly film series showcasing the black experience from around the world
- The Craft of Writing: Fellows on Both Sides
Award: $25,000
To celebrate Cuban writers through new fellowships in creative writing for Cubans living on the island and in exile
- Oscar Mike: On The Move
Award: $100,000
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
- Voices: Poetry for the People
Award: $25,000
To engage new audiences in the literary arts by bringing workshops led by poet Aja Monet to grassroots leaders involved in social justice issues
- PageSlayers Summer Camp
Award: $45,000
To provide fourth- and fifth-grade students in Opa-locka with high-quality writing instruction taught by published and award-winning professional writers of color
- N8tive Reel Cinema Festival
Everett Osceola
Amount: $50,000
To highlight the words and works of indigenous peoples by launching the first southeastern Native American film festival
- Celebrating Miami’s Cuban Heritage via Miami International GuitART Festival Dedicated to Cuban Music
Florida International University
Award: $55,000
To honor Miami’s Cuban heritage by dedicating the Miami International GuitART Festival to Cuban music and creating cultural exchanges between Havana and Miami guitar orchestras.
- Fringe Projects + R & R Studios
Award: $35,000
To stretch the bounds of public art by partnering with R&R Studios on BEAUTY FOR ALL!!!, R & R's first site-responsive project, an LED-activated mural in Downtown Miami that counteracts the ever-present messages of consumption on signs in the city
- Music Is My Weapon
Award: $25,000
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
- Brownsville Unity Music Project: A Link to the Past, A Door to the Future
Historic Hampton House Community Trust
Award: $150,000
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
- Hurricane Andrew 25th Anniversary Exhibition
Award: $120,000
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew by capturing the storm’s impact through a large-scale moving exhibition
- Hotbox Art Residency Program 2016
Award: $40,000
To create a catalyst for transforming the West Palm Beach Northwest Historic District by turning the shotgun homes into spaces for artist residencies for community engagement
- IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Festival
Award: $20,000
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
- Outdoor Projection Series
Award: $45,000
To engage neighborhoods in art by transforming building facades with large-scale projections of interactive video and animations by local artists
- Miami Motel Stories
Award: $30,000
To explore Miami’s many layers by presenting immersive, real-time theater experiences in three motel rooms or buildings that tell the stories of the city’s emerging neighborhoods
- Forward Motion: Miami International Physically Integrated Dance Festival & Conference
Award: $150,000
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
- Island in the Works: Young Writers Studio
Award: $52,500
To foster engagement with Key West’s literary and cultural history by providing a free, five-day summer program for Key West High School students on the literary and cultural history of the island
- Miami Beach Cinematheque Interactive Archive Project
Award: $30,000
To bring a rare collection to the community by digitizing and displaying the cinematheque’s archive of film memorabilia and ephemera
- Return of the Black Ballerina
Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
Award: $150,000
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
- International Ballet Festival of Miami
Award: $50,000
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 and their ballet stars from around the world in addition to a dance films series, art exhibit, dance book presentation, workshops and classes
- Miami Music Club
Award: $12,750
To create a space for underground musicians and artists to come together by producing a series of concerts at traditional art spaces
- American Clásico: Envisioning the theatrical canon though a multicultural lens
Award: $150,000
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
- Origami Everglades
Michael Graves Education
Award: $40,000
To heighten public awareness about the importance of the Everglades to Miami’s future with life-size sculptures of endangered animals made through origami
- Crypt Cracking: Uncovering the Unseen Objects in South Florida Museum Collections
$25,000
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: Miami
Award: $150,000
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
- Reading Queer Literary Festival
Award: $70,000
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
- Axis of Love
Award: $45,000
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
- The Unvoiced Community: BBQ Men & Women of Goulds
Award: $12,500
To tell the stories of the barbecue vendors of South Dade’s Goulds neighborhood with a photo documentary project and community celebration
- 305/One Festival
Award: $50,000
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
- "Take it to The Bridge"
The Bridge
Award: $50,000
To provide artistic support for musicians by building out an event space and recording room with free production and streaming services
- The M Ensemble 45th Anniversary Season: Returning Home to Liberty City
Award: $70,000
To promote a new home for theater in Liberty City, Sandrell Rivers Theater, where M Ensemble will be a resident company, with a year-long engagement initiative
- The Screening Room, Miami
Award: $20,000
To expand multimedia artistic programming in Miami through new installations at Wynwood’s The Screening Room
- AdHoc Cinema
Torrance Carter
Award: $15,000
To foster the love and knowledge of film among students by bringing AdHoc Cinema, a traveling film and music series, to local schools
