Past Knight Arts Challenge Winners

All the past Miami Knight Arts Challenge Winners. We will keep this page updated with each new set of winners. Original information from KnightArts.org
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2014
$2.29 million

Pop-up Art Book Store Ignites Conversation
Recipient: Amanda Keeley
Award: $50,000
To foster dialogue surrounding the visual arts, EXILE Books will migrate throughout Miami raising awareness about artist’s books, or publications conceived of as works of art in and of themselves. EXILE evolves at each location, presenting a thematic selection of titles paired with performances, workshops, and events. Created by visual artist Amanda Keeley, EXILE offers a range of publications including self-published limited edition books, small press monographs, journals, zines, rare titles and ephemera. This hybrid art installation and retail store seeks to raise awareness about artists’ publications and catalyze debate around contemporary, independent publishing.

Project Preserves Analog Recordings in a Digital World
Recipient: Andrew Yeomanson (DJ Le Spam)
Award: $35,000
To preserve the art of analog recording, City of Progress studio, which allows local musicians the chance to record on vintage equipment, will upgrade its facility. Established in 2003, City of Progress provides classic analog recording equipment and vintage instruments at low cost to Miami’s musicians and artists. The studio also provides analog-to-digital transfer and preservation services to artists and labels whose body of work exists in formats no longer supported by most studios. By providing high-quality recordings, the studio hopes to create a growing catalog of recordings that reflect Miami’s dynamic music community.

Wild Billboards Bring Everglades into the City
Recipient: Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE)
Award: $60,000
To bring a bit of the Everglades into the city, Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) will create billboards emblazoned with large-scale images and literary works reflecting the South Florida outdoors created by its artists in residence. Timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016, the “wild billboards” will be strategically placed throughout South Florida’s urban core, so that the view of a billboard and its surroundings make a complete statement. Artworks such as Susan Silas’ striking images of extinct birds and Adam Nadel’s aerial photography of the stark boundaries between urban and wilderness areas will encourage viewers to reconsider these sites, and serve as a reminder that the River of Grass preceded our cities and continues to “flow” just to the west.

Weird Miami Tours Go National
Recipient: BFI (Bas Fisher Invitational)
Award: $150,000
To raise the profile of Miami artists, BFI will take its “Weird Miami” shows and bus tours to exhibition spaces around the world in a global gallery swap. A previous Knight Arts Challenge winner, “Weird Miami” exhibitions and bus tours turn locals into tourists as they discover new artists and unnoticed places around the city. With new funding, BFI will take “Weird Miami” to Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and other cities.

Bookleggers’ Mobile Library Expands Outreach
Recipient: Bookleggers
Amount: $30,000
To bring literature to more Miamians, Bookleggers will expand its community mobile library, which provides books for free, for trade or by donation. The library currently holds events each month at venues such as public parks, art galleries, museums, bars and schools. With upwards of 300 people attending each Bookleggers event, the library has exchanged thousands of books with people across Miami-Dade County. Knight Foundation funding will help Bookleggers continue its community outreach, in addition to providing a free/low-cost used book market for Miami’s literary community.

Books & Books Brings Author Events Online
Recipient: Books & Books
Award: $80,000
To bring great literature into more homes, Books & Books will expand its online streaming of author events featuring noted writers from a variety of genres. For more than 30 years, Books & Books has presented authors live for nightly talks and book signings at its three South Florida-based locations and offsite at partnering venues. LIVE at Books & Books allows people everywhere to watch author events online, call the store, order the book and have it signed by the author and shipped to their home. They can also participate in the conversation itself by submitting their questions to be read aloud during author Q&A sessions. All events are archived online, extending the life––and reach––of the events.

Street Performers Bring Downtown to Life
Recipient: Buskerfest Miami!
Award: $10,000
To enhance civic life, Buskerfest Miami will produce a music festival and a performance series called Ear to the Ground. The projects will feature local artists performing in public parks, transit hubs and community plazas that often go unnoticed and underutilized. Both the festival and the Ear to the Ground series will encourage participation at all levels by the local artistic community and attendees through unique programming and game-like features. These events enliven public spaces while providing local artists a chance to perform and to connect face-to-face with their audience.

Microgrant Program for Experimental Art Expands
Recipient: Cannonball
Award: $150,000
To support the growing number of innovative, artist-driven projects in Miami, Cannonball will expand WaveMaker Grants, its microgrant program for unconventional artistic projects. The program seeks to recognize and validate experimental, artist-centric activities that resist marketplace demands. The targeted projects are noncommercial, stimulate critical thinking and dialogue and expose the public to innovative artistic practices. Knight Foundation funding will increase the amount awarded to artists in this program, which is in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Microtheater Expands in Downtown
Recipient: Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana
Award: $50,000
To provide an intimate and innovative cultural experience, Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana will expand its Microtheater program, which produces short plays for small audiences in repurposed shipping containers. First launched in Madrid, Microtheater debuted in Miami with Knight Arts Challenge funding in 2012, and continues to build an audience while providing local artists a platform for their work in its downtown venue. The Microtheater program offers seven plays at a time around one theme, performed in seven separate containers, supporting local creativity while facilitating cultural exchange.

Doral Brings New Arts Programming to West Dade
Recipient: City of Doral
Award: $60,000
In order to enhance artistic offerings in West Dade, the City of Doral will bring new programming to Downtown Doral Park. Because a majority of the region’s performing and visual arts centers are an average of 25 miles away, the city is partnering with major arts organizations to present outdoor dance and musical performances, as well as visual arts exhibitions to bring the arts more deeply into nearby neighborhoods.

Festival Explores African Culture Through Music
Recipient: Community Arts and Culture
Amount: $40,000
To celebrate world music, the Afro Roots World Music Festival will expand to three days and take place in a variety of neighborhoods around Miami-Dade County. The festival celebrates the evolution of African culture in Miami, highlighting the works of both local musicians and international acts. Satellite events will include artist lectures and a show-and-tell-style presentation for children. By taking place in different areas, the event gives tourists and locals an opportunity to explore Miami neighborhoods, such as Little Haiti and North Beach.

Cultural Exchange Planned for Miami and Havana
Recipient: Elizabeth Cerejido
Award: $60,000
To create an artistic dialogue, this project will launch an exchange initiative between Cuban and Cuban-American artists through a series of programs and exhibitions in Miami and Havana. The goal is to provide an opportunity for dialogue and exchange and discussion of issues that include artistic practices, cultural identity and the art market as they relate to the realities of living and creating in distinct social contexts. Subsequently, an exhibition project in both cities will highlight collaborative works that result from these exchanges. Academic institutional partners include The University of Miami’s Cuban Theater Digital Archive, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Miami Observatory on Communication and Creative Industries in addition to Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute.

Fort Lauderdale Arts Space Provides Home for Experimental Work
Recipient: FATVillage Arts District
Award: $80,000
To promote cutting-edge contemporary art in Fort Lauderdale, FATVillage Projects Contemporary Art Space will expand its reach, opening to the public on a daily basis. The space exhibits challenging work that falls outside the realm of commercial galleries, providing opportunities for artists working with experimental, immersive, and nontraditional media to create and install new works on site. With Knight Foundation funding, the space, which is now only open for its monthly art walks, will open daily to the public and offer more programming.

Electronic Music and Sound from the Americas Featured in New Series
Recipient: Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts (FETA)
Award: $15,000
To highlight new music in the Americas, the Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts (FETA) will present a music series with cutting-edge sound art and music works from all 35 countries in the Americas. Over the course of two years, this project will feature at least two works from each nation in 12 dedicated concerts, and develop an exchange program. In addition, special events will be organized for select Miami-Dade County public schools. The series seeks to expand Miami’s music scene and raise awareness about the diversity of experimental electronic music in the Americas.

Hialeah Collective Engages City in the Arts
Recipient: HICCUP
Award: $15,000
To support experimental art in Hialeah, HICCUP, an art/design collective, will present a series of interventions throughout the greater Hialeah community. The group will produce a bimonthly publication that focuses on Hialeah’s popular culture, a Hialeah souvenir that reflects the city and its manufacturing base (which often produces souvenirs for other locales), and public art/design interventions that encourage fellow residents to interact.

HistoryMiami Launches Photo Center
Recipient: HistoryMiami
Award: $150,000
To tell Miami stories through images, HistoryMiami will create a photography center at the museum focused on curating exhibitions and engaging the community in documenting life in South Florida. The museum already houses more than one million historical images, including Miami Herald and Miami News collections and 30 years of ethnographic documentation of the region’s cultural heritage. The Center will collect photography from the public, capture images through its own documentation projects, offer photography programs, and more. With these activities, the center will capture, safeguard, and share the images that illuminate the Miami experience.

Dance Festival Highlights Afro-Cuban Culture
Recipient: IFE-ILE
Award: $15,000
To strengthen Afro-Cuban culture in Miami, IFE-ILE will expand the offerings of its four-day festival that features a fusion of contemporary and traditional Afro-Cuban dance. The event also includes a symposium, street fair and workshops. The 2015 festival also will host the premier of “Entre Cielo y Tierra,” choreographed by the group’s founder Neri Torres and reflecting the experiences and contributions of Cubans who arrived in the United States during the Mariel boatlift.

New inkub8 Lab Helps Artistic Voices Grow
Recipient: inkub8
Award: $30,000
To provide artists a place to create, inkub8––which is dedicated to the creation of new, performance-based work––will create a lab space at its Wynwood studio. The space will have three components: a choreography lab where artists can share ideas and methods, a workspace where dancers can learn a variety of performance techniques, and a feedback forum in which artists can show works in different stages of development, followed by conversation. Inkub8 hopes to provide a space for artistic voices and give choreographers a forum for researching and developing new work outside the context of a formal project.

Super Bowl of Poetry Coming to Broward
Recipient: Jason Taylor Foundation
Award: $50,000
To bring the “Super Bowl of poetry” to Broward County, the Jason Taylor Foundation will launch a friendly spoken-word poetry competition between local schools. Since founding the bluapple Poetry Network with actor and poet Omari Hardwick in 2012, the foundation has helped more than 40 Broward County schools activate this program, with more than 500 participants inspiring their communities with poetry. Knight Foundation funding will help launch Louder Than a Bomb Florida by bringing school-based poetry teams together for year-round in-class and after-school instruction culminating in an 11-day festival in April 2015.

Kinetic Sculpture Parade Comes to Key West
Recipient: Key West Art & Historical Society
Award: $15,000
To bring Key West together, the Key West Art & Historical Society will create a kinetic sculpture parade, where artists, bike riders and the community co-create a wacky display of art on wheels. These sculptures are typically custom-built, human-powered works of art that attract creative enthusiasts. After the parade, the machines will be on display, accompanied by a day of music and free activities. Organizers hope the event will promote bike culture, environmental causes and inspire artists of all ages to participate.

Book Series Puts Spotlight on Miami Photographers of the ‘70s and ‘80s
Recipient: Letter 16 Press Award: $20,000
To recapture South Florida’s rich history, Letter 16 Press will digitize the work of some of Miami’s most talented photographers from the ‘70s and ‘80s and publish it in a book series. This arresting imagery provides a rare window into a surreal, and often-chaotic period of Miami’s culture — yet much of it remains trapped on 35mm film negatives, hidden away in boxes, and largely unknown to today’s audiences. With Knight Foundation funding, Letter 16 Press will carefully digitize these negatives and collect the strongest work in a series of beautifully produced books, introducing the photos to fresh eyes in South Florida and beyond.

Haitian Rara Music Celebrated with New Youth Program
Recipient: Little Haiti Cultural Center
Award: $50,000
To preserve Haitian Rara, a form of festival music used in street processions, the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, in partnership with the Caribbean American Visual Cultural Preservation, will create a youth rara institute where teens can learn to play and make traditional instruments. The music centers on a set of cylindrical bamboo trumpets, but also features instruments made from recycled metals, drums, maracas and metal bells. Songs are always performed in Haitian Creole and typically celebrate the African ancestry of the Afro-Haitian people. The center’s program of workshops and classes will culminate with the Haitian Heritage Festival in May 2015.

Young Students Trained in Urban Dance
Recipient: Live in Color Dance Collective
Award: $20,000
To strengthen South Florida’s distinct brand of urban funk dance, Live in Color Dance Collective will train and mentor young artists through the full production process of a piece, from auditions, to rehearsals and performance. The participants will not only benefit from instruction but will also have the chance to learn from visiting urban dancers based in Detroit and New York. Collaborations with other urban artists will showcase South Florida culture and strengthen the knowledge that the urban language is an art form that tells the true story of people and place.

Mariachi Academy Comes to South Dade
Recipient: Mexican American Council
Award: $60,000
To celebrate Mexican culture, the Mexican American Council will create a mariachi academy for the children of farmworkers in South Dade. Working in partnership with local schools, the Mexican consulate and South Dade’s business community, the council will recruit children enrolled in the Migrant Education Program, and bring highly qualified instructors directly to the labor camps to teach them about the music, how to play the instruments and instill a love for the arts.

Artists and Architects Meet to Inspire New Ideas
Recipient: Miami Center for Architecture & Design (MCAD)
Award: $15,000
To inspire new ideas, Miami Center for Architecture & Design (MCAD) will bring together artists and architects for discussions around the trend of incorporating art into new buildings. Panelists will discuss a range of issues, including what drives inspiration, what makes great public art and how architects and artists can best collaborate. Taking advantage of Miami’s arts scene and unique architecture, MCAD will bring together local and global architects and artists who have successfully collaborated on projects.

Stories of Modern-Day Marines Told in Multimedia Work
Recipient: MDC Live Arts
Award: $50,000
To share the stories of modern-day veterans, MDC Live Arts will present Basetrack Live, a multimedia performance based on the real words of veterans and their families. Taking place in the South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, the performance will use photos and video from photojournalists working in Afghanistan. With an original live score and script based on testimonials by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the show tells the stories of those stationed abroad and their families as they struggle to cope with separation and the uncertainties of war. MDC Live Arts will bring these experiences to the forefront locally through a season-long initiative designed to build bridges between Miami’s veteran and civilian populations and focus attention on the issues facing veterans post-deployment.

Teaching Artists to Get New Training at Miami Music Project
Recipient: Miami Music Project
Award: $75,000
To enhance music instruction at Miami’s only El Sistema-modeled orchestral program, Miami Music Project will implement a new Teaching Artists Training Program for professional artists. In 2015, Miami Music Project will engage 30 teaching artists to provide free instruments and music instruction to over 400 Miami children in Little Haiti, Liberty City, Little Havana and Doral locations. These musicians follow a unique curriculum customized to the heralded El Sistema, a new model for social change and a visionary global movement that transforms the lives of children through music, which requires specialized training focused on leadership and social skills development. This training will provide comprehensive and meaningful coaching experiences and practical tools to professional musicians, empowering them to become 21st century artist educators.

Prominent Alums Celebrate African Cultural Center’s 40th Anniversary
Recipient: Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
Award: $75,000
To commemorate the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center’s 40th anniversary, Miami-Dade County will present events where prominent artist alums share their talents with today’s students. The center is the nucleus of arts learning, training and access for Greater Miami’s African-American community. To mark its four decades, the center will present “Sankofa: Looking Back, Going Forward,” a yearlong series of events, performances, master classes and workshops celebrating those who have grown up in the inner city and contributed to the creativity of its young people.

Fashion As Art is Focus of New Museum
Recipient: Museum of Fashion
Award: $25,000
To celebrate the art of fashion, curator Keni Valenti will strengthen a new museum collection that highlights vintage couture. Over the years, Valenti has amassed a collection of 15,000 articles of clothing, accessories, jewelry and more, from the 1920s to the present. With Knight Foundation funding, he will continue to preserve, collect, study and present these pieces at the Museum of Fashion in Wynwood, and partner with other institutions like HistoryMiami on exhibitions.

Classic Film Series Expands at the Cosford
Recipient: Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies
Award: $15,000
To preserve the experience of viewing vintage films, the Cosford Cinema will expand its Cosford Classics series, which showcases films presented on 35 mm celluloid. To enhance the screenings, the Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies will invite guest curators, including local film experts and internationally known scholars and filmmakers, to speak on each film, its cultural significance and the importance of film preservation in modern culture.

New Ensemble Focuses on Music and Multimedia Performances
Recipient: Nu Deco Ensemble
Award: $75,000
To provide innovative concert experiences, Nu-Deco ensemble will offer a hybrid of music genres and multimedia performances while focusing on works by living composers and music from the last century. Nu Deco Ensemble is a virtuosic and flexible chamber ensemble focused on commissioning composers, performing an array of genres and engaging and educating the broader community about live classically inspired performances. Founded in 2013 by rising conductor Jacomo Bairos and in-demand composer Sam Hyken, Nu Deco Ensemble presents eclectic styles of music, art and media works in both traditional and alternative venues.

New Miami Publishing House Features Local Works
Recipient: Jai-Alai Books
Award: $40,000
To create an aesthetic voice for Miami, Jai-Alai Books will be a small press subsidiary of O, Miami, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding and advancing literary culture in Greater Miami. The literary landscape of Miami is anchored by institutions like Books & Books, Miami Book Fair International, and university-level creative writing programs. The missing piece is publishing. By linking some the world’s best authors, trends, and works to Miami-Dade County, Jai-Alai Books seeks to deepen Miami’s connection to the literary world at-large as well as to its own literary life. Organizers expect to publish three to five titles a year in a variety of genres, each one geared for a general audience and created with the belief that everyone contributes to literary culture. As the city’s only literary publishing house, Jai-Alai’s emphasis will be on projects that capture works that are essentially Miami.

Design District Gallery Focuses on Artistic Values
Recipient: Oliver Sanchez
Award: $15,000
To support Miami’s grassroots arts scene, Knight Foundation funding will help strengthen Swampspace, a gallery that presents innovative visual arts and performance productions focused on artistic values. Founded in 2008 by Miami artist Oliver Sanchez, the Design District-based Swampspace helps emerging, established and overlooked artists present their work free of commercial constraints. Funding will help Swampspace build on this foundation and expand its student internship program, administer artist fees and execute other programming.

Olympia Theater Expands Downtown Arts Series
Recipient: Olympia Theater at Gusman Center
Award: $50,000
To infuse downtown Miami with the arts, the Olympia Theater will expand its monthly jazz performance series in the lobby of the Olympia Theater. Started in 2013 and curated by the Miami Jazz and Film Society, the “In the Lobby Lounge: Jazz” series has grown to host more than 200 patrons a month in a cabaret-type setting, with free admission and local ensembles performing. In 2015, the Olympia will produce a weekly lobby event that includes jazz in addition to other genres of music, poetry, storytelling and performance art.

Artistic Transformation Planned for Opa-locka Thoroughfare
Recipient: Opa-locka Community Development Corporation
Award: $100,000
To re-envision Opa-locka as a destination for art, the local community development corporation will engage the community in co-creating a large-scale public artwork. Noted artist and landscape architect Walter Hood has been commissioned to overhaul one of the city’s main thoroughfares, Ali Baba Avenue, and the surrounding public realm as an artistic corridor. Hood, the community development corporation, and a Leadership Miami team called Miami Rise will work with residents to transform the avenue – currently wide, barren and unappealing to pedestrians and drivers – with painted interventions. The group hopes that the avenue will become a visual marker to signal that change is happening in Opa-locka, inspiring local residents and businesses and attracting visitors.

Art Meets Science at Frost Science Performance Series
Recipient: Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science
Award: $15,000
To bring art and science enthusiasts together, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science will host a performance event series, Science Art Cinema, that mixes 20th century science and science fiction films with performances and multimedia presentations. Science Art Cinema presents 16mm motion pictures and newly commissioned films, and enhances them with live music or theater, guest speakers and multimedia presentations, curated by Kevin Arrow, Frost Science Art & Collection Manager, Barron Sherer, Media Archivist, and Jorge Perez-Gallego, Frost Science Astronomer and Exhibition Developer. The series will culminate in a call for newly created and locally made films, in addition to a book, to which the community will be asked to contribute.

Choreographers Bring Dance to Unexpected Locations
Recipient: Pioneer Winter / Pioneer Winter Collective
Award: $20,000
To provide opportunities for local choreographers, the Pioneer Winter Collective’s Grass Stains project will commission site-specific works throughout Miami that are free and open to the public. The participating choreographers will choose from a set of curated, nontraditional locations that will heighten the level of site-specific work in Miami. Grass Stains will help these choreographers hone their skills in site-specific performance, as well as provide them with the opportunity to be mentored by noted Guggenheim Fellow and Bessie Award-winning choreographer and director Stephan Koplowitz. Grass Stains seeks to help professionals push the boundaries of their practice, make their work accessible to a wider audience, and create work that is socially and culturally relevant to their community.

Cultural Mash-up Mixes Indian Dance with Afro-Caribbean Poetry
Recipient: Ranjana Warier
Award: $35,000
To celebrate Miami’s many cultures, dancer Ranjana Warier will collaborate with prominent Miami poet Adrian Castro for a project that sets traditional Indian dance to the rhythms of Castro’s Afro-Caribbean verse. Together they will portray how two seemingly disparate cultures are both about human beings’ needs to express themselves and to tell stories. This project culminates with performances in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties during April, National Poetry Month.

Collective Challenges Artistic Boundaries Through Technology and Performing Arts
Recipient: Sound and Vision
Award: $10,000
To foster innovation in the arts, the collaborative Sound and Vision brings together musicians, filmmakers, performers, dancers and visual artists for weekly meetings to share work and concepts, perform material and challenge artistic boundaries through technology. Through the meetings, the group produces events that marry technology and performance to expand the impact of their performances.

Stiltsville to Host Artist-in-Residence Program
Recipient: Stiltsville Trust
Award: $25,000
To inspire artists, the Stiltsville Trust will create an artist-in-residence program inside the seven remaining historic homes that stand in Biscayne Bay. The program will consist of two types of residencies. A studio artist program for professional artists in the visual, performing and the literary arts and architecture fields who wish to create works that contribute to the public understanding of Stiltsville, Biscayne Bay and Biscayne National Park and a shorter, non-studio artist program that will give preference to local artists. Participants will be asked to donate a work to the trust and the park’s collection. Organizers hope the program brings attention to Stiltsville and Biscayne National Park, one of the few national parks in an urban area that is almost entirely under water.

South Dade Children Gain Access to Choral Music Program
Recipient: The Children’s Voice Chorus
Award: $25,000
To enrich the lives of children in South Miami-Dade’s migrant farming communities, the Children’s Voice Chorus will provide transportation to its program in Palmetto Bay. The children will be able to participate for free in the after-school choral music education program. Over three years, the chorus hopes to add 50 children to its program roster.

The Screening Room Brings Films and Video Installations to Wynwood
Recipient: The Screening Room
Award: $25,000
To bring high-quality video installations and film screenings to more South Floridians, Knight will support programming at The Screening Room in Wynwood. A new media exhibition and project space dedicated to the moving image, The Screening Room seeks to bring the Miami community together through new works by film and video artists. Each exhibition is accompanied by an Art Talk to contextualize the work and to create an exchange of ideas between artists and filmmakers.

Festival Pushes Caribbean Avant-Garde in Miami
Recipient: Third Horizon Media
Award: $50,000
To raise the profile of Caribbean artists in Miami, Third Horizon Film, Art and Music Festival will present cutting-edge artists in the diaspora who challenge popular notions of what it is to be Caribbean. The festival seeks to go beyond traditional and folk art already available in Miami to present art at the edges, aiming to establish Miami as the capital of the Caribbean avant-garde. The four-day event will include a film festival, a musical block party and visual art exhibitions.

Trinity Cathedral to Double as Performance Space
Recipient: Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
Award: $30,000
To provide a space for up-and-coming musical talent, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral will open up its downtown sanctuary for a concert series. Each concert will feature two to four groups of a similar genre. The series is an opportunity to reintroduce Trinity Cathedral, a 1,000-person performance space with stellar acoustics, to the Miami music scene and to provide up-and-coming acts access to a venue in a city otherwise lacking in affordable performance space.

Brazilian Music Institute Heads to Broward
Recipient: University of Florida, College of Fine Arts, School of Music
Award: $75,000
The University of Florida seeks to expand the reach of the Brazilian Music Institute with a move to Broward County to the heart of the state’s Brazilian-American community. There, the institute will present Brazilian artists with a weeklong showcase of Brazilian music with internationally recognized guest performers. The institute will also offer master classes to the community, outreach programs in local schools and public performances.

Local Students Jam with Jazz Greats
Recipient: Village of Pinecrest, Pinecrest Gardens
Award: $75,000
To enable Miami-Dade County students to learn from jazz greats, Pinecrest Gardens will expand its popular South Motors Jazz Series to include a new mentor program. In 2015, the series will mark its fifth anniversary by bringing in internationally celebrated artists. These greats will stay on at the Banyan Bowl for a second day to jam with a core group of high school students participating in the jazz magnet program at New World School of the Arts.

Virginia Key Festival Features World Music, Dance
Recipient: Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival of Music, Art and Dance
Award: $75,000
To bring South Florida together through music, Knight Foundation funding will support the Virginia Key GrassRoots Festival of Music, Art & Dance, a four-day event that seeks to nourish minds, bodies and souls. The event will feature South Florida musicians and visual artists, a dance tent with workshops, a stage dedicated to the best of world music and a sustainability fair featuring green businesses and organizations. On site, participants can take a Salsa dance class, help build community structures for the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, learn carpentry skills, experience yoga and tai chi, and dance to the sounds of South Florida’s best musicians as well as world class international artists.

2013
$2.72 million

New residency programs strengthen artistic talent in Miami
ArtCenter/South Florida
$120,000
To provide opportunities for Miami’s artistic talent and to attract new creatives to the city by strengthening the center’s residency programs

Multimedia work explores Miami’s past and present
Awesome New Republic
$40,000
To bring together the city’s musicians, dancers and filmmakers to produce a multimedia theatrical work that explores South Florida’s evolution from swampland to modern metropolis

Spoken word event provides platform for artists
The Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida
$50,000
To provide a platform for recognized and emerging spoken word artists during a monthly series that will eventually be presented at Overtown’s historic Lyric Theater when it reopens in 2014

Cannonball launches educational effort
Cannonball Miami
$120,000
To provide local artists with opportunities for growth through a new educational program that explores experimental thinking in art production and education

Miami Beach gets resident cabaret group
Circ X and The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater
$50,000
To create Greater Miami’s only resident cabaret at the Jackie Gleason Theater by converting the greenroom into a permanent space for regular performances

Training program instills kids with love of jazz
Community Arts Program
$100,000
To introduce more young Miamians to jazz by creating an after-school jazz institute that provides leading-edge training in America’s great art form

High school students explore careers in art and design
Florida International University College of Architecture + Arts
$90,000
To develop the next generation of creatives by launching a summer career discovery program for high school students centered on art and design

Public art and performances presented in extended outdoor program
Friends of the Bass Museum
$75,000
To make provocative artworks accessible to the public by expanding the museum’s outdoor public exhibitions to include concerts, performances and other programming

Annual GLBTQ performing arts festival expands community engagement efforts
FUNDarte
$50,000
To engage South Florida’s GLBTQ youth through the arts by growing the annual Out in the Tropics Performing Arts Festival to include educational workshops in high schools and community centers

GableStage presents plays for local schools
GableStage
$80,000
To promote an appreciation for theater by presenting one of GableStage’s productions to local high schools and middle schools, with a study guide and post-performance discussion

Historic sites play starring role in dance performances
Hattie Mae Williams
$8,000
To explore the past and present of the historic Venetian Pool and the Miami Marine Stadium by creating a site-specific dance performance

Club launches interactive film and new technology festival
Indie Film Club Miami
$100,000
To develop the local film scene by expanding Filmgate, the recently launched interactive film festival, which focuses on cross-platform storytelling, interactive screenings and more

Augmented reality used to transform public art
Ivan Toth Depeña
$50,000
To promote innovation in the local arts community by creating a series of multimedia, augmented-reality public art projects that exist in both the physical and virtual worlds

Keys program instills family interest in classical music
Key West Council on the Arts
$7,000
To spur interest in classical music across generations by creating a monthlong series that includes family concerts and educational lectures

First Haitian-American Book Fair launches in 2014
Mapou Cultural Center
$50,000
To promote Haitian culture and literature by creating a Haitian-American book fair in Little Haiti

Pop-up dinners fund creative projects
Meals That Heal
$40,000
To provide an innovative funding source for the arts by organizing pop-up dinners at arts venues where participants vote on a creative project to support

FAU professor presents multimedia opera
meme – media experi mental ensemble
$2,500
To explore the fusion of art, music and technology by presenting a multimedia opera written by a southern Florida professor

Miami Beach Cinematheque creates dialogue around filmmaking
Miami Beach Film Society
$50,000
To foster a deeper appreciation for cinema through a series of conversations on the art of filmmaking led by local and visiting film critics

Book Fair ‘Swamp’ lounge celebrates Florida
Miami Book Fair International
$120,000
To raise the profile of Florida authors by creating a pop-up lounge at the Book Fair that features writers whose works explore the beauty, contradictions, uniqueness and weirdness of life in the Sunshine State

Dance series to celebrate Lyric Theater reopening
Miami Contemporary Dance Company
$80,000
To draw audiences to Overtown’s historic Lyric Theater with a souped-up dance series taking place when the renovated theater reopens in 2014

Choral groups gain professional training
Miami Gay Men’s Chorus
$10,000
To strengthen choral leadership by expanding the annual South Florida Choral Festival to include professional development workshops

Orchestral academy expands to Liberty City
Miami Music Project
$100,000
To empower more children to play and appreciate classical music by expanding the project’s orchestral academy to a third location, Liberty City

Conversation series demystifies the arts
Miramar Cultural Trust
$12,000
To provide deeper insights into arts and culture through a new series where professional artists perform and engage in a dialogue with the audience

Nollywood films get spotlight at MOCA
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA)
$60,000
To expose South Florida audiences to global art centers through a film festival focused on cinema in Nigeria, home to one of the largest film industries in the world

One-act play festival travels to Miami neighborhoods
New Theatre
$35,000
To sprinkle theater throughout Miami-Dade County by expanding a one-act play festival to four locations from Hialeah to Homestead, Kendall and the beaches

Summer academy preps students for college auditions
New World School of the Arts
$25,000
To help talented low-income students gain a competitive edge in auditions for collegiate arts programs by providing training through the Summer Theater Academy

New technology, viewing space for independent cinema
O Cinema
$45,000
To strengthen a center for independent film by upgrading equipment and adding a second auditorium to expand film offerings

Palm Beach Opera goes al fresco
Palm Beach Opera
$80,000
To bring opera into the community through a series of free outdoor community concerts that include a full orchestra and chorus

Co-op is hub for design and tech-based art
Poly:Mode
$40,000
To build up South Florida’s design and technology-based art community through a co-op offering access to a range of equipment

Day of the Dead celebration to expand
Puppet Network
$40,000
To engage South Florida in the Latin American tradition of Dia de los Muertos by expanding the Broward-based celebration that includes a giant puppet parade, mask workshops and family-designed altars for loved ones

Youth learn art of hip-hop in summer workshop
Puremovement Projects
$50,000
To explore the continuing global impact of hip-hop dance through a weeklong series of free classes and workshops featuring award-winning choreographer Rennie Harris and other hip-hop pioneers

Seraphic Fire to become ensemble-in-residence at South Dade cultural center
Seraphic Fire
$180,000
To bring the award-winning vocal ensemble to new audiences through regular masterworks concerts at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center

Traveling theater wagon pays homage to medicine shows of old
Shira Lee Abergel
$50,000
To entertain audiences unconventionally by reimagining the medicine shows of old in a wooden wagon that travels and transforms into a theatrical playing space

Dancers and musicians collaborate in residency program
6th Street Dance Studio/Whole Project
$45,000
To encourage artistic growth in Miami by creating a residency program for young professional dancers and musicians

Drumming community gathers for master classes
South Florida Center for Percussive Arts
$50,000
To foster a sense of community among an often-disparate group of local percussionists by providing free weekly master classes taught by well-known drumming artists

Lecture series on arts and ethics expands
Studio Enrique Martínez Celaya
$14,000
To strengthen audiences for the visual arts by offering a series of lectures on the intersection of arts and ethics

Festival celebrates international children’s theater
Teatro Prometeo
$50,000
To celebrate children’s theater from around the world by launching a free international children’s theater festival in South Florida during Miami Book Fair International

One-act play explores unique Miami story
Teo Castellanos D-Projects
$25,000
To fuse world culture, ritual and music in a uniquely Miami story through a one-act play and film produced by artists Teo Castellanos and Tarell McCraney

Bakehouse opens metal foundry
The Bakehouse Art Complex
$50,000
To strengthen a studio art space by updating The Bakehouse’s workshops and adding a foundry for casting metals

Program immerses university students in theater production
The M Ensemble Company
$30,000
To inspire an appreciation for theater by having Florida Memorial University students work behind the scenes on a production

Nationally recognized writers to participate in local residencies
The Miami Rail
$40,000
To inspire great writing by supporting a visiting-writers program where authors host lectures, roundtables and workshops

Center provides creative outlet for Miami youth
The Motivational Edge
$50,000
To strengthen an arts program that enables disadvantaged youth to demonstrate their feelings through creative writing and lyrical expression

FLA-FRA celebrates French and Miami-made art
Tigertail Productions
$75,000
To explore art through the perspectives of French and Miami artists during a series of site-specific and new performances that will make up FLA-FRA (Florida-France) in 2014.

Poet Donald Justice gets his due
University of Wynwood
$15,000
To celebrate renowned poet Donald Justice through a new book and conference in his hometown of Miami, where he is virtually unknown

Event celebrates the craft of Florida’s dugout canoes
Upper Room Art Gallery
$30,000
To preserve the traditional art form of creating dugout canoes by organizing a seasonal Paddle Up, featuring Seminole and Miccosukee canoes

Evening art series builds excitement for Pérez Art Museum Miami
Pérez Art Museum Miami
$120,000
To celebrate the new waterfront home of Pérez Art Museum Miami with a monthly series of free evening public programs

Jazz lovers come together through WDNA encounters
WDNA-FM
$40,000
To foster a community of jazz aficionados by expanding WDNA’s Jazz Encounter to a video audience through live broadcasts and video archives

TV series profiles region’s artists, cultural rise
WPBT2/ Community Television Foundation of South Florida
$50,000
To provide exposure for South Florida artists by producing profiles of 20 prominent artists under the age of 40

South Florida playwrights present world premieres
Zoetic Stage
$25,000
To offer South Florida playwrights a platform by producing two world-premiere plays at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

2012
$2.28 million

Bringing Hip-Hop and Cultural Events to Kids
Project: TruSchool Hip-Hop
Recipient: 6th Street Dance Studio/WholeProject
Award: $40,000
The 6th Street Dance Studio’s TruSchool is a free hip-hop program for young people serving Little Havana and Overtown and based on the original elements of hip-hop. With challenge funding, the studio will incorporate house dance, lindy hop, writing and cultural events into its programming, as well as deejaying, emceeing, spoken word and graffiti. The project also will also collaborate with local, national and international performance companies to mentor the program’s participants.
Miami’s nonprofit, professional 6th Street Dance Studio/WholeProject is located in the heart of Little Havana. Directed by professional dancer-choreographer Brigid Baker, the studio is known for its open-air, open-door hospitality and has been home to some of the best professionals in contemporary, urban and commercial dance. Baker ensures that the studio upholds life principles of deep ecology, diversity and greenness. The studio is “dedicated to conquering barriers of racism, sexism, classism and all other forms of small mindedness.”

Introducing Broadway to High School Students
Project: In the Heights for Eighth to Twelfth Graders
Recipient: Actors’ Playhouse Productions
Award:$40,000
To enrich Miami-Dade Schools eighth- through 12th-grade students, Actors’ Playhouse Productions will make 3,000 seats available to the Tony-winning musical In the Heights, and engage them through a rap-writing contest. Students will prepare with study guides on the show’s plot line and will participate in discussions with the director, actors and creative team to better understand the performance and possibilities for arts careers. Students will then write their own personal or family story that mimics the play’s musical score or is in a style appropriate to their cultural background. Finalists will perform their works at the Miracle Theater.
Actors’ Playhouse is the nonprofit resident theater company and managing agent of the historic Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables. Winner of 75 regional Carbonell Awards for artistic excellence, Actors’ Playhouse is a Florida Presenting Cultural Organization and one of 22 major cultural institutions in Miami-Dade County. In addition to its Mainstage season, Actors’ Playhouse offers Musical Theatre for Young Audiences, a National Children’s Theatre Festival, a theater conservatory and summer camp program, as well as outreach programs for underserved youth. It is led by executive producing director Barbara S. Stein and artistic director David Arisco.

Creating Discussion Around the Visual Arts
Art and Culture Center of Hollywood
Project: Hot Topics Artist Series
Award: $20,000
To foster conversation around the visual arts, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood will host an ongoing lecture series featuring nationally and internationally recognized artists. Audiences will not only hear the artist’s stories, but learn about the trends influencing the direction of contemporary visual art. The project builds upon the center’s previous Knight Arts Challenge grant that establishes a series of Hot Topics discussions.
The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood is an independent nonprofit that operates visual arts galleries in the 1924 Kagey House, an Art School adjacent to the main facility, and a 500-seat theater in downtown Hollywood. The center, incorporated in 1978, is one of eight organizations designated a Major Cultural Institution by the Broward Cultural Division. Each year, ACCH presents more than a dozen contemporary gallery exhibitions; more than 70 arts-education programs for children and adults; and the free or low-cost Family Performance Series.

Giving a Voice to More Miami Stories
Project: Lip Service: True Stories from all Miami Communities
Recipient: Lip Service
Award: $50,000
To give voice to more Miami stories, Lip Service will create live storytelling performances about personal experiences focused on people who, for a variety of reasons, don’t often have opportunities to tell their stories. The performances, taking place quarterly at the Miracle Theatre and other community theaters, will be produced in collaboration with local community groups.
Created by Andrea Askowitz and Esther Martinez, Lip Service gathers, shares and broadcasts true, personal stories from our community. Each quarter, eight stories are chosen from hundreds of submissions. These stories are edited, rehearsed and then read by their authors before a live audience. Through the writing and editing process, the meaning of a life event is crystallized; on stage, personal stories are transformed into art.

Arts Skill Building for High-School Students
Project: ArtWorks
Recipient: Arts for Learning/Miami
Award: $225,000
Arts for Learning/Miami will provide opportunities for high school students to pursue their interests in the arts while learning essential work skills by offering six-week paid summer art internships and apprenticeships. Professional artists will team with students five days a week to focus on a specific art form such as dance, printmaking, painting, graphic design or photography. The program will focus on students from the Miami neighborhoods of Overtown, Wynwood, Little Haiti and Liberty City to help them develop deep appreciation for the arts. Students will also participate in Art Basel Miami Beach, via tours or volunteering.
Miami’s leading organization dedicated solely to advancing teaching and learning through the arts, Arts for Learning (A4L) works to ensure that the arts are central to the life of every child. Connecting professional visual and performing artists to school, preschool, after-school and summer programs, A4L annually reaches thousands of students, giving them the opportunity to experience and understand an art form, create a work of art, and connect their work to other areas of learning. A4L’s services include teacher and artist professional development, arts integrated instruction, student studio programs, community arts programs and student internships and mentoring.

Developing Local, Contemporary Dancers
Project: Miami Dance Mecca
Recipient: Augusto Soledade Brazzdance
Award: $45,000
To build Miami’s reputation as an emerging center for contemporary dance, the Augusto Soledade Brazzdance company will create new works and help dancers develop professionally. Company classes, master class series, new work and repertory performances will be available to professional and advanced dancers as will internship opportunities. The project seeks to increase the ranks of local professional dancers who remain in Miami to pursue a dance career and simultaneously attract out-of-town dancers into the community.
Augusto Soledade, a native of Bahia, Brazil, is a performer,choreographer and assistant professor in dance at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Fla. He is founder, artistic director and resident choreographer for Augusto Soledade Brazzdance, or Brazz Dance Theater, in Miami. In the fall of 2012, Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs for the fourth time awarded Soledade the Miami-Dade Choreographer’s Fellowship. He also received the 2012 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. He received his M.F.A in dance from SUNY Brockport in 1998.

Mini Theater in a Shipping Container
Project: Microtheater
Recipient: Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana Miami
Award: $100,000
To bring Spanish theater into the community, Centro Cultural Español de Cooperación Iberoamericana Miami will offer a series of exciting yet short plays to small audiences in a 150-square-foot shipping container. Lasting 15 minutes each, the plays will be presented three times a year in both English and Spanish. Actors from around the world will be invited to participate as a way to support local creativity and cultural exchange.
CCEMiami’s mission is to contribute, through culture and science, to social and human development in South Florida. It seeks to disseminate information on the breadth and diversity of Spanish culture in Miami, to cooperate with local actors and cultural institutions, and to promote the exchange of cultural ideas, projects and proposals from different countries.

Expanding a Nonprofit Film Arts Center
Project: Coral Gables Art Cinema
Recipient: Coral Gables Cinemateque
Award: $150,000
The Coral Gables Art Cinema, one of South Florida’s leading, first-run alternative movie theaters, will expand to include a number of new components. With challenge funding, the nonprofit arts center will produce a three-day annual event as part of existing family programming, in partnership with the New York International Children’s Film Festival; and launch initiatives to support feature film production and distribution, including visiting director, screenwriter and producer residencies, in conjunction with existing exhibition programs.
Coral Gables Cinemateque Inc. is a nonprofit that presents and supports the media arts in South Florida, primarily by developing and running the two-year old Coral Gables Art Cinema as a venue for alternative film serving the whole community. This state-of-the-art, 141-seat theater is runs seven days a week, presenting premieres of quality American independent and international features that speak to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the region. Most films are not generally available at other venues in South Florida. Also programmed are classic films, family events, educational activities and film festival weeks.

A Creative Hub for Culture in Palm Beach
Project: Arts Garage Jazz Project
Recipient: Creative City Collaborative DBA Arts Garage
Award: $30,000
The Creative City Collaborative will facilitate an exchange of art and ideas by presenting contemporary musical performances, feature films, visual art exhibitions and new theater productions at a Palm Beach collaborative. The project will continue its signature repertoire series and add special new programming, including performance that will highlight regional emerging artists. Arts Garage will also partner with regional cultural arts organizations to produce new plays and expand its educational programs.
The Arts Garage mission is to build and promote the cultural community that celebrates Delray Beach, and to be the instrument for Delray Beach as the international cultural destination for artists and patrons.

Crowdsourcing Funding for Broward County’s Arts
Project: power2give.org
Recipient: Business for the Arts of Broward
Award: $75,000
To connect local cultural projects to more donors, Business for the Arts of Broward will bring power2give.org to its community. The online crowdsourcing platform is designed to connect donors directly with projects they are passionate about, whether it is, for example, a new theatrical production in need of costumes or a musician needing a new instrument. Since the Arts and Science Council in Charlotte, N.C., launched the platform approximately a year ago with Knight support, three other arts agencies across the country have used the platform to raise more than $1 million for arts projects.
Business for the Arts of Broward is a nonprofit organization engaging business and business leaders to advocate and educate about the importance of the county’s art and cultural community as well as to recognize the connection between cultural vitality, creative success and economic development.

Expanding Performance Art and Literary Residency Opportunities
Project: Theater Lab
Recipient: Deering Estate Foundation
Award: $35,000
To foster a cultural dialogue between artists and audiences, the Deering Estate Foundation will support a performing art series and a residency opportunity that includes lectures and master classes at the estate. Building on its already successful visual, literary and performance art program, the expanded residencies will include a playwright development program, retreats and a resident theater company. Interdisciplinary workshops, lectures and master classes will be offered in exchange for residency opportunities.
The mission of the Deering Estate Foundation is to raise public awareness, outreach, understanding and the appreciation of the Deering Estate at Cutler and to raise funds to support education, research, exhibits and collections, natural conservation and historical restoration and preservation.

Bridging Art, Music and Nature
Project: Expanded Cultural Programming
Recipient: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Award: $150,000
To bring together nature and art, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will strengthen its GardenMusic program under conductor Teddy Abrams. Musical performances and concerts will be available throughout the year. Additional fine art exhibitions and an annual weeklong festival will celebrate various forms of music that integrate the visual, dramatic and performance arts.
Fairchild’s mission is to save tropical plant diversity by exploring, explaining and conserving the world of tropical plants; fundamental to this task is inspiring a greater understanding and love of plants and gardening so that all can enjoy the beauty and bounty of the tropical world.

Experimental Music Event for South Florida Musicians
Project: International Noise Conference
Recipient: Frank Falestra
Award: $15,000
Now in its 10th year, the International Noise Conference is an exceptional opportunity for South Florida musicians to perform and network with composers from other cities. This year, with challenge funding, the experimental music festival will expand. Local, national and international musicians will be invited to participate, and a recording studio and music archive will supply tools to encourage innovative compositions. New works will be produced and broadcast over the Internet.
Frank “Rat Bastard” Falestra for over two decades has been one of the most ubiquitous presences in the local music scene. When Rat’s not fronting conflagrations such as Laundry Room Squelchers, women who play anything that generates a sound, or Scraping Teeth, Spin’s worst band in America of 1993, he’s heading up the International Noise Conference, a weeklong cacophony that has blasted Miami for 10 years. For over 25 years Rat was part of what has become known as the Miami noise scene that played at Churchill’s almost every week.

New Original Contemporary Arts Performances
Project: Miami on Stage Knight New Works
Recipient: FUNDarte Inc.
Award: $100,000
FUNDarte will use Knight Foundation funding to strengthen the performing arts scene by commissioning three original contemporary performance works by Miami-based artist companies. As an outgrowth of FUNDarte’s three-year-old Miami on Stage series, which presents completed full-length works by local artists, the Knight New Works component will select three projects to fully produce, present and tour to two additional locations in greater Miami. FUNDarte will also offer managerial and logistical support to the artist-driven works.
FUNDarte is a multidisciplinary nonprofit dedicated to producing, presenting and promoting music, theater, dance, film and visual arts that speak to Miami’s diverse cultures, with a special emphasis on artists from Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain. FUNDarte works to nurture emerging artists and those with little or no exposure to South Florida audiences, to facilitate intercultural and international exchanges, and to provide local audiences and artists with educational opportunities that expand their creative, critical and social perspectives.

Using Hackathons to Connect Technology and Art
Project: A Three-Day Art Hackathon
Recipient: The LAB Miami
Award: $30,000
The LAB Miami will bolster innovation in the arts by bringing together creative professionals and techies for a three-day art hackathon. During the event, coders and designers will develop apps and websites that answer one question: how do we enhance the delivery of local art to users? The project seeks to bridge Miami’s tech and creative communities. A product demo will be open to the public on the final day of the event. Other programming for the hackathon includes keynote speeches by tech and creative leaders and a mentor system to coach teams.
The LAB Miami Innovation Campus is a center for technology, design and social enterprise. Composed of working space, education platform, gallery, pop-up shop and cafe, The LAB Miami is a place to learn, act and build. Through this shared space concept, entrepreneurs are easily able to collaborate, cocreate and connect, thus improving their practice and developing effective networks. The LAB Miami is also committed to providing a cutting-edge educational platform. Its mission is to drive entrepreneurial growth and generate positive social impact at the local, national and international levels.

Establishing a Cultural Center for Hialeah
Project: The Hialeah Cultural Center
Recipient: Miami Dade College
Award: $80,000
To celebrate and preserve the arts and culture of Hialeah, Florida’s fifth largest city, Miami Dade College will create and launch the Hialeah Cultural Center. Miami Dade College’s Hialeah Campus, serving a city without art museums and with limited opportunities for arts performances, will conduct start-up activities for the new center, including planning, program development and promotion. A launch event will showcase the work of area artists and feature a public discussion on intellectual and artistic freedom. Additional activities include hands-on art projects and a video of oral histories from Hialeah.
Miami Dade College’s Hialeah Campus, with over 17,000 students registered annually, became the college’s seventh campus in 2005. Serving the Greater Hialeah-Miami Lakes and Hialeah Gardens area, it offers day and evening classes seven days a week. Courses leading to associate degrees in arts or science are offered, with business, computer technology and health sciences the most popular programs. The Hialeah Campus is undergoing the most significant expansion in its history, a transformation leading to a “greener” footprint with more open spaces and state-of-the-art facilities that make use of natural light and the campus’ central location.

Introducing Travelers and Residents to Global and Local Rhythms
Project: Educational and Entertainment Encounters
Recipient: Miami International Airport
Award: $40,000
To engage and connect audiences to global and local rhythms, Miami International Airport will present performances of world music to its travelers. Building on the success of the airport’s Random Acts of Culture performances, the project will coordinate elements of live performances and formulate a list of key ensembles and areas for performance. Additional exhibits will offer a range of visual experiences including a contemporary fine arts show and children’s arts and crafts from around the world. Presentations will highlight global issues.
The primary mission of the Miami International Airport’s Division of Fine Arts and Cultural Affairs is to humanize and enrich the airport environment. The division does this by: providing a cultural and educational experience for passengers and the public; creating an exhibition program unique to Miami that reflects the history, cultural life and resources of Miami-Dade County; addressing the interests of the traveling public with exhibitions that will communicate culture, environment and art resources of an international scope with special emphasis on the areas served by Miami International Airport.

Artists in Resident Program for Emerging Artists
Project: Here & Now: A Knight Emerging Artists Program
Recipient: Miami Light Project
Award: $120,000
To support emerging artists, the Miami Light Project will create an artist-in-residence program as part of its annual Here & Now Festival, which commissions and presents local works. Artists will be offered year-round, dedicated rehearsal space at The Light Box and professional development support including workshops on financial, legal and marketing topics. Presenters, managers and agents from across the country will be invited to Miami to attend the performances and speak one-on-one with each of the commissioned artists.
Founded in 1989, the nonprofit Miami Light Project presents live performances by innovative dance, music and theater artists from around the world, supports the development of new work by South Florida-based artists, and offers educational programs for students of every age. Since inception, it has reached a diverse cross-section of communities throughout Miami-Dade County with an extensive outreach effort that includes partnerships with other arts organizations, universities and social service agencies. Miami Light Project is a cultural forum to explore some of the issues that define contemporary society.

Series Celebrates the Artistic Talents of Miami-Raised Artists
Project: Bring It Home Miami
Recipient: Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
Award: $45,000
To celebrate native talent, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs will present a Bring It Home Miami series at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Center. Featuring artists from South Florida who have developed national and international reputations, it will honor and welcome talented alumni back “home.” The series seeks to kindle community pride among South Floridians around the accomplishments of its homegrown talent.
The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and its volunteer advisory board, the Cultural Affairs Council, develop cultural excellence, diversity and participation throughout Miami-Dade County by strategically creating and promoting opportunities for artists and cultural organizations, and all of our residents and visitors who are their audiences.

Infusing Symphony with Innovative and Emerging Composers
Project: Residency Program
Recipient: The Miami Symphony Orchestra
Award: $45,000
The Miami Symphony Orchestra will commission new works through a composer-in-residence program, as a way to further develop South Florida’s musical voice. The orchestra will train, develop and promote three emerging composers to create music reflective of the city of Miami, including Latin-American, Afro-Caribbean and traditional orchestral pieces. The program will give the orchestra an original focus and new purpose as it channels the inspired energy of talented composers.
The Miami Symphony Orchestra’s mission is to present the highest levelof musical artistic excellence to the diverse audience of South Florida. By combining symphonic music from Latin America and Spain with the music of American composers and the great European masters, MISO strives to enlighten and entertain the multicultural community and help to develop the audiences of the future.

Celebrating South Florida’s African Diaspora Artists
Project: Art Exhibit and Festival
Recipient: Opa-locka Community Development Corporation
Award: $60,000
To celebrate the art of the African diaspora, the Opa‐locka Community Development Corporation will produce a multidisciplinary juried arts festival and exhibit to coincide with major public art installations in Opa‐locka. The event will bring noted national and regional artists from throughout the African diaspora to Opa‐locka. Highly participatory community programming will engage youth, residents and attendees in the art‐making process. Lectures and workshops will increase exposure for artists and community access to the arts. The event is part of a larger plan to make quality art of all forms accessible in Opa‐locka.
The nonprofit Opa‐locka Community Development Corporation (OLCDC) serves as a catalyst in rebuilding North Miami‐Dade’s most challenging low‐income neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities. Its mission is to create and stimulate economic development and affordable housing, improving the quality of life for residents in Opa‐locka and neighboring communities. OLCDC is leveraging a $22 million HUD housing rehab grant to catalyze the sustainable revitalization of Opa‐locka. Art is a strategic component of this approach. A major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts supports integration of the arts and culture into its holistic community development approach.

Building Community Among Filmmakers
Project: An Open, Friendly Space for Filmmakers
Recipient: Open Lab
Award: $35,000
To help build the local film community, Open Lab will create monthly gatherings where filmmakers screen their work. Monthly events will include work-in-progress screenings with feedback sessions and case studies from industry experts. These open get togethers will be held at a different space each month, engaging audiences from various parts of the community and introducing them to cultural organizations and arts venues around Miami. The project will culminate with visits from three leading industry experts, connecting the Open Lab community with the national resources and knowledge on how to market and distribute completed films.
Open Lab’s mission is to propel Miami’s existing film and video art scene nationally and internationally with monthly gatherings at various locations where filmmakers screen their work, exchange ideas and engage South Florida’s diverse voices to produce new work.

Celebrating a Hip-Hop Symphony
Project: The Hip-Hop Symphony
Recipient: Pablo Malco Foundation
Award: $10,000
To celebrate South Florida’s cultural traditions, the Hip-Hop Symphony combines hip-hop dance and music with classical music and instrumentation. The show features 13 versatile hip-hop and contemporary dancers, a 20-piece orchestra, a five-piece rock band and seven-voice choir. Several tickets will also be donated to youth organizations as a way to engage young people in theater productions and classical music.
The Pablo Malco Foundation strives to provide performing arts excellence. from beginning-level classes with master instructors to professional performance opportunities for novice and professionals. The foundation is committed to helping youths grow with positive morals, dignity, confidence, self-esteem and self-discipline; to providing quality classes in which aspiring performers may continue their education; to providing paid work opportunities for performing artists in our community who live from their art or craft; and to producing fun-filled world-class musical productions for the entire family to enjoy.

Series Celebrates Genre- and Gender-Bending Literature
Project: Reading Queer
Recipients: Paula Kolek and Neil de la Flor
Award: $30,000
To promote Miami as a center for LGBT literature, Paula Kolek and Neil de la Flor will create a Reading Queer series for writers who create hybrid, genre-bending works. The annual, weeklong series will feature headliners at local cultural centers and galleries and writing workshops. An anthology of the series also will be printed. The project will reach out to young people to give them a safe space to talk about and explore sexual themes.
Paula Kolek is a visual artist, poet and teacher whose poetry has been published in New Letters, Collective Brightness Anthology and Ditch. Kolek earned her MA from the University of Massachusetts Boston and MFA from the University of Miami. She teaches writing and literature at Miami Dade College and Barry University. Neil de la Flor is a writer, teacher and photographer. His publications include An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards, and Two Thieves and a Liar. He is the performance arts journalist for KnightArts and contributes to the arts bureau Art Burst Miami. He holds a MFA from the University of Miami.

Demystifying Indian Classical Dance
Project: Adoption of Western Fairly Tales
Recipient: Ranjana Warier
Award: $25,000
To promote cross-cultural understanding, Ranjana Warier will showcase traditional Indian dance through the stories of Western fairy tales. Leading professional Indian classical dancers will collaborate on the performance, while a lecture series will seek to demystify the complexity of traditional Indian storylines. The resulting stage shows will maintain the integrity of the ancient art form while breaking it down to make it more enjoyable for all ages.
Ranjana Warier was introduced to Indian classical dance at the age of 6. She has been an active performer/choreographer at events and festivals in United States and abroad. Recognized for her efforts to educate children on culture and history of India through dance, she thrives on preserving and promoting India’s artistic traditions. She has won grants from local government organizations and is the artistic director of Rhythms School of Dance in South Florida. Warier, a cyber security engineer for Miami-Dade County, has an engineering degree and a master’s degree in computer science.

Free Concerts Make Miami a Musical Destination
Project: Stipend for Touring Acts
Recipient: Sweat Records
Award: $140,000
To help make Miami a musical destination, Sweat Records will provide a stipend for touring acts to provide free or affordable concerts for an all-ages crowd. The project will increase the number of quality events it brings to the community and will host and pay more touring acts to visit. Sweat Records will also revamp its stage area with new sound equipment, a simple lighting rig and seating for more patrons. Concerts will be documented via audio, video and photography. Highlights will be posted online and performers will get high quality footage for promotional use.
Sweat Records was founded in 2005 to fulfill the dual missions of providing Miami with a world-class record store and to be a unifying entity for South Florida’s independent music scene.

A Hub for Creative Writing in South Florida
Project: The Writer’s Room
Recipient: The Betsy Hotel
Award: $60,000
To brand South Florida as a muse for authors, The Betsy Hotel will expand its new writer-in-residence program on Miami Beach. The program offers a private space for writers offering them the solitude and support necessary to complete their work. The award-winning writers will also participate in public readings and a workshop and art salon series. A biannual publication will contain commentary and works from the writers.
The mission of the Writer’s Room at The Betsy Hotel is to create a very special place on South Beach for writers and other creative artists where they can find the tranquility and inspiration needed to do their best work. The room is made available to visiting artists working in a wide variety of domains and disciplines – with a focus on poets during final-stage efforts. Betsy is a historic property committed to exploring the capacity of the arts to bridge past, present and future.

Sharing African-American History Through the Arts
Project: Liberty City Renaissance
Recipient: Miami Children’s Initiative
Award: $75,000
The Miami Children’s Initiative will launch a cultural movement that shares local history using the arts, inspires and showcases local African-American artists, and encourages the creativity of the next generation of performing and visual artists. The project includes a jazz series led by the musician Nicole Henry and the Orchestral Academy for Liberty City’s kids from 4- to 18-years-old in partnership with the Miami Music Project. The initiative will establish Liberty City Renaissance Arts Council responsible for commissioning work from local artists and maintaining a robust and lively online presence.
The Miami Children’s Initiative is creating a community‐based network that develops, coordinates and provides quality education, accessible health care, youth development programs, opportunities for employment – all ingredients for safe neighborhoods for children and families.

A Space For Small Performing Arts Groups
Project: Miami Theater Center: Sandbox Series
Recipient: Miami Theater Center
Award: $100,000
To help nurture individual artists and small performing arts groups, Miami Theater Center (MTC) will provide a small, well-equipped black box theater at discounted rates. The theater will make available its 70-seat space to promising performing artists and provide public relations, marketing and production support. Talented artists will be chosen to produce and perform their work in the theater and be provided a commissioning fee and rehearsal and performance space for six shows.
MTC, under the leadership of artistic director Stephanie Ansin, produces classical and contemporary works that entertain and educate audiences of all ages and abilities.

Innovating Miami’s Theatrical Experience
Project: Strengthening Alternative Theater
Recipient: The Project [theatre] Award: $25,000
The Project [theatre] will use challenge funding to expand efforts to redefine the local theatrical experience. To attract both new and existing theatergoers, the Project will create large-scale immersive theater events in which the audience literally follows and experiences a story throughout its environment. The organization will also expand its Beer & Cigarettes project that blurs the line between spectator and spectacle. During these immersive, site-specific performances, the audience acts as voyeurs and stories unfold throughout a bar over the course of a night. These nontraditional theatrical experiences intend to help establish Miami as a place for theatrical innovation.”
The Project [theatre] works to redefine the theatrical experience in Greater Miami.

Big Night in Little Haiti Gets Bigger
Project: Big Night in Little Haiti
Recipient: The Rhythm Foundation
Award: $120,000
To continue the growth of Little Haiti as a cultural and entertainment destination, and to introduce new audiences to Haitian music, The Rhythm Foundation will expand its successful Big Night in Little Haiti monthly concert series. A previous Knight Arts Challenge winner, the project offers free concerts, art exhibits, food and kids activities on the third Friday of each month at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. The growth involves the collaboration of civic, institutional and media partners who can provide additional outreach activities, documentation and broadcast reach, in addition to special events within the series.
Rhythm Foundation is a nonprofit organization celebrating its 24th season of presenting outstanding international artists in South Florida. It is considered the foremost presenter of world music in South Florida – presenting more than 500 concerts, events and festivals by established and innovative artists from around the world.

A Creative Center for South Florida’s Dance Community
Project: The Synapse Performance
Recipient: Thought Loom
Award: $50,000
To position South Florida as a hub for dance, Thought Loom will pair South Florida-based choreographers with national and international dance artists for seasonal performances. Three South Florida-based choreographers will be selected to create original works using dance artists hired from cities outside of Florida. Each will work with his/her cast for several weeks, culminating with a run of live performances.
Thought Loom (www.thoughtloom.org) is a virtual/physical platform whose mission is to cultivate the generation, execution, and communications of ideas that nurture and push the field of dance. It hopes to create a generative pipeline between and among dance artists from around the globe, as well as thinkers from other disciplines. Thought Loom is the brainchild of choreographer Letty Bassart and is being built with bicontinental dance artists, Lydia Bittner Baird and Ilana Reynolds; as well as generous contributors, designers and co-dreamers.

Murals Engage Young People with Overtown’s Art, History
Project: Murals for Dorsey Park
Recipient: Urgent Inc.
Award: $35,000
To engage and inspire young artists, Urgent Inc. will help young people create murals in Overtown’s historic Dorsey Park to commemorate it as the home of South Florida’s Negro League baseball team. Artist Kadir Nelson will help mentor young people as they work on the murals and learn about a time and place that connects them to their cultural past. The 30 murals created will be officially dedicated to the players of the Negro and Cuban leagues.
URGENT Inc. is a community-based organization whose mission is to empower young minds to transform communities. It does this by promoting shared leadership through empowerment, education and engagement to create collective well-being. Urgent Inc. chooses to work with individuals and communities that are most in need of transformation because its vision is that all people will have the social, educational and economic resources to thrive. It believes elders are the anchors of communities, parents are the coaches, but young people are the drivers of change.

Transforming Little Havana Through Art
Project: Monthly Cultural Festivals
Recipient: Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays
Award: $80,000
To accelerate the transformation of Little Havana’s arts district, Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays will expand the scope and programming of its popular monthly cultural festival. The event will also establish new offerings for younger generations such as introducing the game of dominoes and offering Latin dance classes. By expanding its marketing and promotional campaigns, it will bring diverse communities together with artists from different Hispanic nations and provide new opportunities for emerging artists. Gallery tours will also be offered.
The mission of Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays is to promote cultural, artistic and economic renaissance of historic Little Havana, to accelerate the transformation of its arts district using arts and culture to bring people of different cultures together, to promote economic revitalization and tourism, and to provide a venue for visual artists and entertainers to showcase their work while linking the artistic community to the public.

2011
$2.9 million

Women Artists Celebrated in Art Books Series
Project: Miami Women Artists Books
Recipient: [NAME] Publications
Award: $20,000
To celebrate local women artists, [NAME] Publications will dedicate its Miami artists book series for one year exclusively to four women and their work. These original works are seen as a space where artists can further develop their ideas and projects, not just as a simple container of previous works. The designer books will be showcased in international collections and libraries and promoted at art book fairs, aiming to increase the understanding of Miami’s diverse cultural community, both locally and internationally.

Everglades’ Artist-in-Residence Program Expands
Project: Artists in Residence in Everglades
Recipient: Artists in Residence in Everglades
Award: $30,000
To help artists bring their passion for the Everglades to the public, the Artists in Residence in Everglades program will expand to include additional programming, a stipend and professional support. Because artists and art lovers are great ambassadors for the beauty of the park’s rare ecosystem, the program will help connect artists in the Everglades with Miami’s urban art scene, creating a bridge of artistic exploration connecting South Florida’s east and west coasts.

Building Arts Leaders and Bridging Leadership Gaps
Project: Arts Board Marketplace
Recipient: Arts & Business Council of Miami
Award: $30,000
To increase the number and diversity of board candidates accessible to arts organizations, the Arts & Business Council of Miami will create a program to match business and community participants with available board positions at Miami arts groups. The council will develop and launch an innovative website and online platform, train arts executives about board recruitment and management, and provide leadership seminars for business professionals. The project aims to build new leaders for the cultural community, as well as new audiences and income sources.

Artist-Led Bus Tours Explore Miami’s “Weird” Side
Project: Weird Miami Bus Tours
Recipient: Bas Fisher Invitational
Award: $100,000
Bas Fisher Invitational will offer a behind the scenes look at the city and its artistic offerings by expanding the popular, artist-led Weird Miami bus tours, which introduce locals, as well as tourists, to lesser-known places and cultural projects. Bas Fisher will invite artists to create tours and exhibitions that reflect their relationship with the city. The project also will create an interactive, online presence to enhance the experience.

Temporary Public Art Pops Up Around Miami Beach
Project: TC: Temporary Contemporary, a temporary public art projects program.
Recipient: Bass Museum of Art
Award: $80,000
The TC: Temporary Contemporary project will surprise and engage the public by populating the city center area of Miami Beach with temporary public art projects that include sculpture, murals, sound installation and video. The Bass Museum will select more than a dozen artists over two years to create public art that will be installed throughout the project period. The effort aims to strengthen the city’s arts district by bringing public spaces alive through the wonder of art.

Long-Standing Local Artists Get New Spotlight on Their Work
Project: Bridge Red Studios Project Space
Recipient: Bridge Red Studios
Award: $15,000
Bridge Red Studios Project Space will give new exposure to long-standing artists by providing a space to exhibit their works and ideas. While the arts community continues to grow and expand in South Florida, the community will benefit from a space dedicated to mid- to late-career artists. Bridge Red Studios Project Space will be a venue to showcase these visual artists of significant accomplishment, as a way to help them foster connections with new audiences.

Ceramic Enthusiasts Get New Tools
Project: CLM Center for Ceramics
Recipient: Ceramic League of Miami
Award: $25,000
The Ceramic League of Miami will further strengthen the ceramic arts in South Florida by providing artists and potters working in clay with access to kilns and studio facilities at its South Dade location. The league will equip the center with a custom-built soda kiln and host a series of workshops, lectures and classes to introduce the project. The project aims to introduce students and young artists to the possibilities of working with clay and raise public awareness about the broad appeal and varied styles of the ceramic arts.

Workshops Teach the Craft of Traditional Haitian Art
Project: The Haitian Heritage Art Project
Recipient: City of Miami Little Haiti Cultural Center
Award: $75,000
The Little Haiti Cultural Center will support traditional Haitian arts by conducting workshops in papier-mâché, textiles and other disciplines, then host a community festival to highlight them. Project organizers will recruit residents for courses in Haitian fine arts and crafts, including monthly weekend workshops where Haitian guest artists will conduct classes and discuss the creative process. The project will culminate with a Haitian Heritage Art Fest featuring the new artwork of project participants, as well as a street parade with traditional Haitian attire, masks, Kompas music and Haitian cuisine.

Training, Mentorship for Playwrights
Project: CityWrights Miami – A Professional Weekend for Playwrights
Recipient: City Theatre
Award: $75,000
City Theatre will cultivate South Florida playwrights by hosting an annual conference that brings together local writers with national playwrights, artistic directors and industry leaders. CityWrights will go to the heart of a playwright’s craft, offering master classes, workshops and mentorships in artistic and professional development. The process will be open to all through public readings with local actors and directors, giving audiences a role in the process from page to stage and promoting the theater as a center for fresh, new works.

Multimedia Coral Reefs at MIA Build Excitement for new Miami Science Museum
Project: Aqua/Cultural Transformation: The New Miami Science Museum
Recipient: Coral Morphologic
Award: $150,000
Coral Morphologic has teamed with the Miami Science Museum to build excitement for its arrival downtowns at Museum Park by collaborating on a multimedia art-science project at Miami International Airport. This public project will promote the world-class aquarium exhibits that will be central to the new Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, to be completed at the end of 2014. High-definition screens will be installed in airport terminals and waiting areas to portray fluorescent corals as living art forms and icons of the city. These installations will engage, relax and entrance travelers of all ages, while reinforcing Miami’s position as a gateway to the coral reefs of the Caribbean. Additionally, coral aquascapes also will be shown on the New World Symphony’s 1,700 square foot outdoor projection wall during a night of underwater film.

Cuban Masters in Exile Bring Works to Miami
Project: Sweet Home Museo Cubano
Recipient: Cuban Museum
Award: $100,000
The Cuban Museum will bring the work of distinguished Cuban artists in exile to South Florida through a series of exhibitions and performances at the Cuban Museum. The one-year series will feature performances by Cuban exile pianists, singers, a saxophonist and filmmaker-playwright, among other artists of various disciplines. Sweet Home hopes the exhibits will attract new visitors, increase interest in Cuban-American art, and make the museum a home away from home for Cuban artists in exile.

Contemporary Art Space Engages Community with Experimental Work
Project: Dimensions Variable: Experimental Projects
Recipient: Dimensions Variable/Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
Award: $40,000
Dimensions Variable will present experimental works in South Florida through exhibitions at an independent space featuring site-specific works by national and international artists. Artists will be invited from near and far to create the unique works; they hope to engage audiences through lectures and discussions that broaden Miami’s engagement in an international contemporary art dialogue.

Opera Draws New Audiences with Performances in Unexpected Places
Project: Unexpected Opera in Unexpected Places
Recipient: Florida Grand Opera
Award: $240,000
Florida Grand Opera will bring opera to new audiences by presenting new or updated operas in a unique, intimate space once a year. This project aims to attract younger audiences to bold and modern productions in nontraditional venues. The opera company will find new production spaces and create a custom marketing strategy, following up with new patrons and establishing a model that can be replicated by other opera and performing arts groups.

Winter Shakespeare Festival Brings Together Royal Shakespeare Company and GableStage with Acclaimed Local Playwright
Project: Winter Shakespeare Festival – New Audience, Old Master, Outdoors and Free
Recipient: GableStage
Award: $120,000
GableStage will introduce a new audience to an old master by launching a Winter Shakespeare Festival, in collaboration with acclaimed playwright and Miami native Tarell Alvin McCraney and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The festival will stage new productions of Shakespeare’s plays, adapted and led by McCraney, an international playwright in residence at the company. Admission will be free to the public and the performances presented outdoors in Coconut Grove and in downtown Miami’s Bayfront Park. GableStage will also organize educational activities and bring performances to Miami-Dade Public Schools, especially those in low-income neighborhoods.

New Residency Program Cultivates Performing Artists
Project: Inkub8 Residency Program
Recipient: Inkub8
Award: $50,000
Inkub8, an experimental, hybrid performance space in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, will expand its offerings and cultivate more local performing artists by creating a residency program. The effort will offer space for a month and a modest stipend in exchange for artists teaching classes and exhibiting works. The final event, a performance with all the resident artists, will further nurture community building, expand the definition of performance and explore new mediums that incorporate movement, dance, theater, sound art and other emerging hybrid forms.

Local Performing Artists Receive Professional Development Training
Project: MDC Live! at Miami Dade College
Recipient: Miami Dade College
Award: $40,000
Miami often lacks professional development programs for active performing artists who want continuing educational opportunities without having to enroll in a degree program. Popular in many universities worldwide, summer intensives that feature master artists address a need for professionals seeking advanced-level, world-class training at home. Miami Dade College’s MDC Live! series proposes to expand its educational component to create more in-depth intensives and long-term learning opportunities for performing artists.

Exhibit Sparks Dialogue About a 20th Century Art Movement
Project: CoBrA—Multidisciplinary Response to International Collaboration
Recipient: Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale
Award: $300,000
The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale will enhance local knowledge and dialogue concerning the CoBrA art movement, formed in the aftermath of World War II, through an international partnership that includes artistic residencies and a major exhibition from the museum’s collection. The movement, named for artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, rejected traditional Western culture and embraced rich colors and intriguing, spontaneous-feeling designs. The museum will develop an interactive CoBrA website, produce three exhibitions on the movement’s art forms and cultural connections and host a range of artistic competitions and workshops. The project aims to ignite dialogue, strengthen awareness of the museum’s CoBrA collection and reveal the movement’s impact on contemporary artists.

Dance Lessons Help Develop Creativity in Special-Needs Students
Project: Inclusive Dance – Benefits for All – Expanding the Boundaries
Recipient: Karen Peterson and Dancers
Award: $10,000
Karen Peterson and Dancers will provide dance instruction to 450 middle and senior high students with special needs, helping them develop creativity, teamwork and strong self-esteem. Teachers will meet once a week for 15 weeks with each classroom of 20 to 25 students to research movement toward performance. A five- to seven-minute dance will be created for students at each participating school, and the project will end with a gala dance concert. The training aims to help students learn self-expression and self-confidence while using movement for fun.

Festival Celebrates Overtown’s Rich Artistic Heritage
Project: Overtown Rhythm and Arts Festival
Recipient: Overtown Rhythm and Arts Festival
Award: $50,000
The Overtown Rhythm and Arts Festival will celebrate the musical and artistic heritage of Overtown with an annual street festival that draws top acts. Organizers, originally part of a Leadership Miami team, will set up workshops to organize fund raising, marketing and community partnerships. The resulting annual festival of music, art, food and local vendors will draw increasing numbers of diverse audiences, higher-profile acts and sponsors.

Future of Ballet Supported Through New Works Fund
Project: Miami City Ballet’s New Works Fund
Recipient: Miami City Ballet
Award: $300,000
Miami City Ballet will broaden its programming and support the future of ballet by establishing a fund for the creation of new works. The New Works Fund will explore the next generation of choreographic legends by premiering new works this season by Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and British choreographer Liam Scarlett. The project aims to excite audiences and infuse dance with new energy, while placing Miami City Ballet and South Florida at the cutting edge of the international ballet scene.

Downtown Miami to Get Free Concerts – Year-Round
Project: Downtown Miami Concert Series – Summer Shows at the Gusman
Recipient: Miami Downtown Development Authority
Award: $100,000
The Miami Downtown Development Authority will help strengthen a sense of community in the urban core by making the outdoor, winter Downtown Miami Concert Series year-round, with summer shows at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. The expanded concert series, which will feature four genres of music, aims to introduce new generations to the Gusman, increase foot traffic in the downtown area and spur commerce while promoting Flagler Street as a neighborhood where new businesses and rich history come together.

Popular Local Opera Series Expands
Project: Classical Opera Staging for Young Talents
Recipient: Miami Lyric Opera
Award: $40,000
Miami Lyric Opera will strengthen local opera by providing a larger venue and additional performances for the company’s popular subscription series. The project will include expanding the orchestra and enlarging the audience potential to 5,500-6,000 (from a current audience of less than 3,000). The projected results: production enhancement, greater exposure for young singers, more professional productions and a wider diffusion of lyric opera across the community.

Free Music and Dance Concerts Expand in Local Parks
Project: Noches Tropicales/Tropical Nights
Recipient: Miami-Dade Parks
Award: $100,000
Miami-Dade Parks will highlight America’s rich music history by expanding the successful Noches Tropicales to include Tropical Nights, featuring Latin, jazz, blues, folk and other contemporary music. The project aims to extend the park system’s arts programming and encourage community engagement with the arts.

A Mentor for Teen Writers
Project: Writer-in-Residence: Young Adult Fiction
Recipient: Miami-Dade Public Library System
Award: $20,000
The Miami-Dade Public Library System will encourage creative writing among teens by creating a writer-in-residence program for an author of teen novels. While typical the writer-in-residence program focuses on the writer, this program centers on teens, inspiring them to express themselves through their writings. The library will select one resident author who will mentor 20 students in creative writing. Teens will share their works aloud at a culminating event. The resident author will also create a pamphlet of creative writing tips and conduct several workshops open to library users across the county about the different components of writing, both as a creative outlet and as a possible career path.

New Wing at MOCA – Where Kids Learn to Love Art
Project: MOCA Art Institute at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Recipient: Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Award: $300,000
The Museum of Contemporary Art will inspire teens to become lifelong learners and lovers of art by creating an institute to provide free year-round programs in art history, museum studies, studio art, design, creative writing and more. The MOCA Art Institute will offer enriching experiences for thousands of students through an array of comprehensive educational programs in art and communications that use engaging curriculum and a dynamic museum environment to build skills, develop aesthetic analysis and promote creativity through exposure, experience and interdisciplinary discussion. Instruction includes an after-school program for teens, summer journalism and photojournalism courses for inner-city youth and the teen-produced MOCAZINE, an arts and literary journal.

New Dance Company Helps Develop Next Generation of Performers
Project: Peter London Global Dance Theater
Recipient: Peter London Global Dance Theater
Award: $120,000
The Peter London Global Dance Theater will launch in South Florida to support and develop the talents of exceptional local dancers and choreographers who have historically had limited access to local, professional performance opportunities. To help develop talent, the company will conduct master classes and summer workshops, perform many local shows pro bono, and establish collaborations among painters, composers, actors and singers to create innovative performances. A repertoire of thought-provoking choreography that reflects South Florida’s multiculturalism will also be created. The goal is to build a world-class contemporary dance company with solid finances and management that benefits the community through its artistry.

Local Record Label Promotes Engagement Through Experimental Music
Project: Worthy Spectacles and Obsolete Mediums
Recipient: Roofless Records
Award: $20,000
This project will support and develop Miami’s experimental music scene by expanding the local label Roofless Records. The label currently hosts live events and releases limited editions of local artists’ works. Roofless is dedicated to the concept of a label release as an art object – maintaining a free-form aesthetic and ethos with regard to the design, development and production process. With Knight funding, Roofless will be able to launch seasonal catalogs and a publishing house, and continue to curate it signature events.

Latino Theater Greats to Participate in International Hispanic Theatre Festival
Project: Miami: Hispanic Cultural Capital of the U.S.
Recipient: Teatro Avante
Award: $150,000
Teatro Avante will bring a greater representation of Latino/Hispanic theater, playwrights, directors and artists from throughout the world to the Miami-based International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami. This project will create an online, bilingual platform to establish Miami as the nation’s center for Latino/Hispanic performing arts and to collect information and promote dialogue about the richness and diversity of Latino artists’ work. Teatro Avante will create an educational program featuring scholars and researchers, as well as exhibits, and present an annual national conference on Latino theater in the United States.

Mentors for African-American Playwrights
Project: New Play Series
Recipient: The M Ensemble Company
Award: $25,000
The M Ensemble Company will cultivate African-American playwrights by creating a mentorship program to assist in developing scripts for a new play series. The company will hold a bimonthly play-writing workshop geared toward beginners at The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse. A quarterly seminar for new and established playwrights will examine the challenges, rewards and opportunities of writing plays for black theater companies. Early-career playwrights will attend an intensive workshop and work closely with a mentor to develop a specific work. The project is designed to develop and sustain audiences for theater and play reading, and to expand and enrich playwrights in a supportive and dynamic atmosphere. The project will culminate in a two-day public reading of selected plays.

New Dance Thinking in Miami
Project: “Is Paris Burning?”
Recipient: Tigertail Productions
Award: $75,000
Tigertail Productions will foster new thinking in dance with “Is Paris Burning?” a series of guest artist encounters, artist-curated events and site-specific performances that examine and reinvigorate traditional choreography. Tigertail will select a Miami-based artist to conceive a program for stage. National dance leaders and choreographers will lead exchanges and discussions on what is happening in the field. The project will bring to Miami choreographers for informal encounters with area choreographers. “Is Paris Burning?” seeks to create new opportunities for Miami choreographers and establish Miami as a place where a new movement and style of dance is taking place.

Spirit of Haiti’s Art Lives in New Exhibit and Workshops
Project: Edouard Duval Carrie – The Spirit of Haiti
Recipient: Young at Art Museum
Award: $100,000
Young at Art Museum will engage the community in Haiti’s rich artistic traditions through an installation by artist Edouard Duval Carrie, accompanied by family workshops and art-making activities. The museum will collaborate with Carrie and commission the firm Architecture Is Fun to design and develop an installation called The Spirit of Haiti. The museum will develop art activities for the installation, provide free field trips to low-income children and develop family workshops to serve a projected 2,500 people annually. Plans also include producing a four-part Haitian perspectives artist series, based on Haitian culture.

2010
$3.8 Million

Recipient: Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Project: M-DCPS Cultural Passport
Award: $1 million
Summary: To help Miami-Dade students experience South Florida’s cultural richness, the school board will sponsor an arts field trip in every grade. The Cultural Passport program will reach more than 130,000 public school students – or twice the number that participate now. An advisory board representing the cultural, business and educational communities will work together to help coordinate the program. New curricular materials will educate students about the cultural arts they will experience, and teachers will lead activities in the classroom to engage students before and after the arts field trip. The project aims to instill a love and understanding of arts and culture in young people – and to support the long-term future of the arts.
Bio: Miami-Dade County Public Schools provides the highest quality education so that all students are empowered to lead productive and fulfilling lives as lifelong learners and responsible citizens. The school district’s core values are excellence, integrity, equity and citizenship. Miami-Dade County Public Schools is committed to educational excellence for all.

Recipient: University of Miami
Project: Henry Mancini Institute – Outbound
Award: $500,000
Summary: To expose new audiences to great music, the University of Miami will create a community engagement program featuring its Henry Mancini Institute’s multigenre orchestra. The orchestra will bring its blend of stylistically diverse music to such community venues as Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the U.M. Gusman Concert Hall. The program also will include two free community concerts featuring new works by U.M. Frost School of Music students, faculty and guest artists, and a dozen mixed-genre concerts at select public schools.
Bio: The Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music is a world-class music institution with 100 faculty members and 700 students located on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami. The mission of the Frost School of Music is to foster musical leadership by providing an innovative, relevant and inspiring education; advance performance, creativity and scholarship; and enrich the world community with meaningful outreach and brilliant cultural offerings. The Frost School is the exclusive home of the Henry Mancini Institute, which provides students with cross-genre performance opportunities in real-world professional settings, and the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program, which develops the creative skills of talented young artist-songwriters by immersing them in the diverse traditions of American songwriting.

Recipient: City of Miami Beach
Project: Sleepless Night 2011
Award: $200,000
Summary: The city of Miami Beach will inspire and bring South Florida together with a third Sleepless Night festival featuring indoor and outdoor art and performances across Miami Beach. The 13-hour festival, to be observed at the end of daylight saving time 2011, will feature more than 150 performances, exhibits and cultural events at more than 80 locations, including five outdoor stages. As many as 150,000 attendees are expected to share a newfound sense of community as they mingle and experience the work of 300 artists. The festival also aims to stimulate tourism and the local economy by attracting crowds to the city.
Bio: Miami Beach’s cultural affairs program sustains, develops and supports the arts in Miami Beach for the enjoyment and education of residents and visitors.

Recipient: Borscht Film Festival
Project: Redefining Miami in Film
Award: $150,000
Summary: To shape Miami’s cinematic identity, the Borscht Film Festival will showcase and create original films that tell unique Miami stories. The festival will issue an open call for local filmmakers to join them in the process, and will provide financial and professional support for producing the films created annually. After they are completed, the films will be available online, shown at the Borscht Film Festival and made available to national and international film festivals.
Bio: The Borscht Film Festival, established in 2004, is Miami’s fresh local independent film fest. It commissions and showcases films by emerging artists that tell Miami stories that go beyond the typical portrayal of a beautiful but vapid party town, forging the cinematic identity of the city both locally and globally. The Borscht festival has been called “Miami’s best film festival” by Miami New Times and “Miami alt-culture summit” by The Miami Herald.

Recipient: DawnTown
Project: Architecture Contest
Award: $150,000
Summary: To explore innovative architecture, DawnTown will sponsor an annual architectural contest resulting in the creation of a temporary structure. The organization will solicit nominations of architects from around the world who are working with innovative styles, techniques or materials. One winner will be awarded a budget to design a temporary structure to be built on a Miami site. The structure will demonstrate the winner’s innovation and attract people to experience architecture and their community with fresh eyes.
Bio: DawnTown’s mission is to strengthen the connection between Miami and innovative architecture. DawnTown is a partnership among institutions and individuals who recognize that innovative architecture can enrich our lives but is rarely experienced. The partners thus dedicate their time and talents to generating excitement for innovative architecture by organizing competitions, promoting events and generally supporting the community of architects and architecture fans in Miami.

Recipient: Florida Grand Opera Inc.
Project: Opera Free for All – Part Two
Award: $150,000
Summary: To continue cultivating a new audience for opera, Florida Grand Opera will offer discount tickets to winners and entrants in last winter’s Knight-supported drawing for free tickets to Carmen. The opera company will reach out to winners and entrants in the 2010 ticket giveaway, offering them discounted tickets to performances in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The ticket offer will be part of a marketing campaign, with an online survey, that will target the nearly 11,000 contest entrants. Survey results will help the company know what kind of incentives people need to become part of Miami’s faithful opera audience.
Bio: Florida Grand Opera (FGO) is the seventh oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1941 in Miami and 1945 in Fort Lauderdale. FGO is the Southeast’s first regional opera company – created May 31, 1994, by the merger of founding companies Greater Miami Opera and the Opera Guild of Fort Lauderdale. It is the 12th largest opera company in the nation with a budget that has grown from $1,200 in 1941 to a projected $11 million for 2010-11. FGO is categorized by OPERA America as one of 10 Level I opera companies. Each season, more than 60,000 people attend main-stage opera performances in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and thousands more experience FGO through free-to-the-public outreach programs and events. FGO’s educational programs reach 11,000 students annually.

Recipient: Florida International University
Project: Creative Writing Fellowship Program
Award: $150,000
Summary: To advance South Florida’s literary community, Florida International University will create a fellowship program in creative writing for graduate students in the fine arts. Eight Knight Fellows will receive an annual stipend for three years as they participate in a range of community activities, including teaching creative writing in Miami-Dade public schools, coordinating a reading series and representing FIU and South Florida at national writers conferences. The fellowship program aims to help attract America’s top young writers to South Florida and generate creativity within Miami’s arts community.
Bio: Florida International University is Miami-Dade County’s first public, four-year research university. With more than 38,000 students, 1,000+ full-time faculty members and more than 135,000 alumni, FIU is recognized as one of the nation’s largest universities based on enrollment. FIU offers more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in its colleges and schools. As the heart of FIU, the College of Arts & Sciences plays a vital role in the intellectual, cultural and civic life of local, national and international communities. The college provides an educational foundation that prepares students to be successful and engaged citizens in a global society.

Recipient: Funding Arts Broward
Project: New Work Award
Award: $150,000
Summary: To cultivate new arts audience in Broward County, Funding Arts Broward will establish three annual Knight New Work Awards for cutting-edge visual and performing arts projects. An advisory panel of arts professionals will help the group’s board review applications for the award. Each award recipient will give a free artistic demonstration, performance, master class or other presentation in an under-served Broward community. The project aims to increase audience enthusiasm and experience in the arts, draw new talent to the area and result in more sophisticated, ambitious works from the award winners.
Bio: Funding Arts Broward Inc. is a nonprofit arts organization committed to preserving and cultivating the arts in Broward County. FAB! was formed in response to the need for private financial support following drastic government budget cuts in the arts. Each FAB! member contributes $1,000 annually to the arts support fund and votes in the yearly competition that awards grants to nonprofit visual and performing arts organizations in Broward County. FAB! members review applications, view the artists’ works and hold extensive discussions to select proposals from local artists and art organizations.

Recipient: The Rhythm Foundation
Project: Big Night in Little Haiti
Award: $125,000
Summary: To showcase Haitian music, the Rhythm Foundation will produce a monthly concert series in Little Haiti featuring the country’s diverse rhythms. The free series will include performances in such venues as restaurants, art studios and other cultural centers. The concerts will allow Haitian artists to reach a larger audience and will showcase the broad and rich culture of Little Haiti, including its food, music and fine arts. The project also will help unify the community and attract South Floridians to the neighborhood, creating a broader audience for retail businesses and the Little Haiti Cultural Center. Interactive components on a website will use social media to generate interest and gauge impact.
Bio: The Rhythm Foundation, a Miami-based nonprofit cultural organization, is the foremost presenter of world music in Florida. Founded in 1988 with the goal of increasing international awareness through live music, the Rhythm Foundation has presented more than 400 concerts, events and festivals by established and innovative artists from around the world. Special focus is given to those cultures connecting to South Florida audiences – music from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Europe. Many of the world’s established music legends have made their U.S. or Florida debuts with The Rhythm Foundation. Recognized as one of the top world music presenters in North America, the organization has built strong name recognition and a dedicated audience over the last 22 years. Its success is due to the selection of premiere artists and consistent quality of production.

Recipient: Bass Museum of Art
Project: Curatorial Fellowships
Award: $100,000
Summary: To foster dialogue within the Miami arts community, the Bass Museum of Art will create three one-year curatorial fellowships in contemporary art. This project will offer hands-on training to emerging curators or recent master of arts graduates. Among other activities, the fellows will conduct studio visits and gather materials to help the museum develop a complete archive on Miami artists. They will also help create an outdoor art program for Collins Park. In addition, the fellows will develop programming and contemporary artists’ projects for display in the Bass’ small-project room, called The Cabinet, and facilitate an educational lecture series for museum members.
Bio: Located in Miami Beach, the Bass Museum of Art offers a dynamic year-round calendar of exhibitions presenting contemporary art, works of art from its permanent collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture and textiles, and newly opened Egyptian Gallery. Artist’s projects, educational programs, lectures, concerts and free family days complement the works on view. Founded in 1963 when the City of Miami Beach accepted a collection of Renaissance and Baroque works of art from collectors John and Johanna Bass, the collection was housed in an Art Deco building designed in 1930 by Russell Pancoast. Architect Arata Isozaki designed an addition to the museum that doubled its size from 15,000 to 35,000 square feet between 1998 and 2002.

Recipient: Centro Cultural Brasil-USA da Florida
Project: Interactive Oscar Niemeyer Exhibit
Award: $100,000
Summary: To expose South Floridians to the mind of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, Centro Cultural Brasil-USA da Florida will produce an interactive exhibit showcasing his creative process. The Niemeyer exhibition at Miami’s Freedom Tower will aim to enrich Miami culturally and enhance the city’s appeal as a global cultural destrination. A collaboration with the schools of architecture at the University of Miami and Florida International University, the project will feature lectures by professors to the architectural community and the general public. Middle and high school students will receive special tours of the exhibition.
Bio: The Centro Cultural Brasil-USA da Florida is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization established in 1997 with a mission to disseminate Brazilian culture in South Florida and strengthen the ties between Florida and Brazil.

Recipient: Friends of Gusman
Project: Gusman Center Stage Access
Award: $100,000
Summary: In an effort to attract resident companies of high artistic quality, Friends of the Gusman will create the Theater Rental Subsidy Fund. Over one year, three to five resident companies working in a variety of genres will perform at the Gusman Center as resident companies. They will enjoy theater and equipment rental subsidies, regular rehearsal time and priority booking in advance for new users. The project will allow cultural producers in South Florida to gain access to an exceptional and competitively priced venue located in the heart of downtown Miami.
Bio: Friends of Gusman is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization affiliated with the Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. With the oversight of a dedicated volunteer board of directors, Friends functions as a support organization to the staff of the theater. It works to advance and promote the theater through activities including preservation, restoration, operation, fund raising and marketing. Friends aims to preserve and promote this dynamic, historic community theater for the benefit of its resident companies, artists, patrons and surrounding community.

Recipient: Miami Art Museum
Project: “The Record” Exhibition Outreach
Award: $100,000
Summary: To enhance an exhibition on the role of art in vinyl record covers, Miami Art Museum will create an outreach series of performance, lectures and other events. “The Record,” to be presented in a 5,000-square-foot gallery and include work in a variety of media, will help the museum make contemporary art more appealing to a younger, music-oriented crowd. Related programs will embrace the range of musical cultures in Miami, from techno to Latin to hip-hop. On-site events will include gallery talks, performances, record swaps and other interactive sessions. The museum will collaborate with clubs, music stores and alternative spaces for off-site events, including DJ performances and artists who use music in their work.
Bio: Miami Art Museum is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries, with an emphasis on the art of the Atlantic Rim – the region from which most Miami residents hail, including the Americas, Europe and Africa. Miami Art Museum’s educational programming reaches more than 30,000 people every year. The new Miami Art Museum at Museum Park, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is scheduled to open in 2013. In its new facility, MAM will have additional room to showcase the museum’s growing collections, an expanded exhibition space and a state-of-the-art educational complex.

Recipient: Miami Hispanic Ballet
Project: Miami Hispanic Cultural Arts Center
Award: $100,000
Summary: To culturally enrich the region, Miami Hispanic Ballet will create the Miami Hispanic Cultural Arts Center, offering multidisciplinary programming in Little Havana. The ballet group will hire instructors to offer high-quality classes, including comprehensive and progressive training in classical ballet, modern dance, flamenco, jazz and lyrical dance for ages six through adult. The cultural arts center also will hold Spanish-language theater production and literary workshops, and host up to six visual arts and historical exhibitions annually, as well as provide after-school and summer programs to underserved Hispanic communities.
Bio: Miami Hispanic Ballet (MHB) was incorporated in July 1993, as a not-for- profit dance organization. The company’s mission is to encourage excellence in dance, support artistic and cultural diversity and increase the opportunities for people to experience classical and contemporary dance forms. The organization is committed to developing and educating audiences in the appreciation of dance through the production and presentation of high quality events and educational programs. MHB has produced and presented major ballet performances of proven artistic excellence, and has hosted for 15 years the Annual International Ballet Festival of Miami. In 2009, Miami Hispanic Ballet received funds from Miami-Dade County to purchase a property in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. This facility will provide MHB with a permanent home, the Miami Hispanic Cultural Art Center that will be devoted to promoting dance and offering a variety of programs and activities throughout the year.

Recipient: The PlayGround Theatre
Project: The Red Thread
Award: $100,000
Summary: To foster understanding of Chinese culture, the PlayGround Theatre will produce the world premiere of a children’s production based on an ancient folktale. An estimated 16,000 children, teachers, family members and others will make up the audiences for 62 performances of The Red Thread, a play inspired by Chinese folklore. Study guides, available online and in the theater, will help teachers present pre- and post-performance classroom activities designed to maximize the play’s academic and creative impact. The theater also will conduct workshops with PlayGround actors in schools, parks and community events to introduce students to live theater and create interest in PlayGround productions.
Bio: The PlayGround Theatre creates high-quality, innovative theatre for South Florida’s children and their families. Founded in 2004, the company has produced nine plays that delight, provoke and inspire audiences of all ages and abilities. The shows reflect the international flavor of the South Florida community and expose audiences to the literature, art, and culture of England, Italy, China and beyond. The Theatre Inclusion Program ensures that performances are accessible to all children and adults, and workshops, classes and camps provide a variety of theater education opportunities in parks, schools and hospitals as well as at PlayGround’s own venue.

Recipient: WDNA-FM 88.9 Public Radio
Project: Close Encounters of the Jazz Kind
Award: $100,000
Summary: To provide new opportunities for jazz musicians young and old, WDNA-FM 88.9 Public Radio will create a venue for them to jam together both in front of an audience and on air. The WDNA Jazz Gallery project will focus on facilitating cross-cultural and cross-generational encounters in music, visual and audio arts, and will highlight the talent of Miami’s diverse jazz community. The gallery space will offer free or discounted admission to events, which can accommodate 50 to 100 people. The project also will host a monthly Latin jazz concert, listening sessions, high school jazz band projects, film screenings and fine arts concerts.
Bio: WDNA 88.9FM is South Florida’s only independent public radio station providing quality music, arts and cultural programming for three decades. In an ever-changing radio landscape, WDNA remains committed to Jazz (America’s classical music), to alternative voices and to the marriage of entertainment and enrichment. Community outreach initiatives include the Miami Jazz Film Festival, Fine Arts Concert Series, Jazz Encounters and other in-house humanities programs.

Recipient: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Project: Masterworks Collection
Award: $90,000
Summary: To increase exposure to innovative art, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County will commission a work annually as the poster image for its Masterworks Classical Music and Dance series. The limited-edition print will commemorate a series of concerts and performances that showcases the best in classical music and dance at the center. The project will generate a greater presence for visual art at the Adrienne Arsht Center and will help build its reputation as a dynamic arts destination, making the visual arts as much of a reason to visit the center as music, ballet or theater.
Bio: The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County is one of the world’s leading performing arts organizations and venues. Made possible by Miami-Dade County’s largest public-private-sector partnership, the center plays host to three resident companies (Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet and New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy), in addition to numerous South Florida arts organizations that perform in its theaters regularly. Since opening in 2006, the center has emerged as a leader in offering and presenting world-class programming that mirrors South Florida’s diversity, as a catalyst for development in Miami, and as a host of influential community and educational programs.

Recipient: South Florida Folklife Center, HistoryMiami
Project: Folk Artist-in-Residence
Award: $90,000
Summary: To raise the profile of the folk and traditional arts, HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center will create an artist-in-residence program where artists showcase their work and interact with the public. The residents will participate in monthly programs for the general public and school children. Recorded interviews, video and other documentation of the artists’ work will be preserved as part of HistoryMiami’s folklife collection. The project aims to strengthen the position of the center as South Florida’s leading organization dedicated to documenting, presenting and supporting the region’s traditional arts and culture.
Bio: HistoryMiami is the premier cultural institution committed to gathering, organizing, preserving and celebrating the elements that show how Miami has become the unique crossroads of the Americas. Through exhibitions, city tours, education, research, collections and publications, HistoryMiami advocates for helping everyone understand the importance of the past in shaping Miami‘s future. The South Florida Folklife Center, a division of HistoryMiami, documents, presents and supports the region’s traditional arts and culture.

Recipient: South Florida Composers Alliance
Project: The Listening Gallery
Award: $75,000
Summary: To foster the appreciation and understanding of sound art, the South Florida Composers Alliance will create a publically accessible exhibition space at ArtCenter South Florida on Lincoln Road. The Listening Gallery, a 24-channel installation, will pipe sound art outside the ArtCenter to the seven million pedestrians who annually stroll Lincoln Road. The project will include curated exhibits and educational outreach programs, and will work in partnership with Art Basel, Sleepless Night and other cultural festivals. A new website will host a sound archive, list details about the exhibits and stream related audio files. The Listening Gallery aims to create opportunities for cultural exchange in the sound arts community worldwide.
Bio: Founded in 1985, South Florida Composers Alliance Inc. (SFCA) is a sound arts organization with the mission to support creative work with sound through projects like iSAW (interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop), and to nurture awareness and understanding of experimental music and sound art through programs such as Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival. In the past two years, the alliance has shifted its mission to one that makes sound art easily accessible to large audiences by staging high quality experimental music and sound art experiences where people already gather. In its first season, the alliance’s Frozen Music installation-performances were experienced by more than three times the audience of 20 years of Subtropics Festivals.

Recipient: ArtSouth
Project: From Rubble to Resurrection
Award: $50,000
Summary: To recapture and promote Haiti’s cultural traditions, ArtSouth will create a youth training program in Homestead led by experts on Haitian art. Some 250 youths recruited from South Florida-based Haitian-American organizations will participate in after-school art classes and workshops on Haiti’s historic arts traditions. Haitian-American and Caribbean artists will guide the students as they learn about Haiti’s artistic heritage and use two- and three-dimensional media, techniques and tools to create their own art.
Bio: ArtSouth, founded in 2000 with a core group of less than 10 artists, has evolved into a landmark arts center in culturally underserved South Dade. In addition to providing artists with affordable studio spaces, the 3.5-acre facility features three galleries, an art school, a ceramic facility, a bronze foundry and a performing arts studio. ArtSouth provides extensive arts education programming for adults and youths, plus free public events year round, including art exhibits and cultural performances. It works closely with government, business and community leaders to enhance the appeal of the downtown historic district.

Recipient: Palm Beach Poetry Festival
Project: Palm Beach Poetry Festival
Award: $50,000
Summary: To foster the appreciation of poetry in South Florida, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival will produce its seventh annual, six-day series of events. The festival will attract poetry writers from across the country to participate in eight nationally advertised workshops led by critically acclaimed poets. The festival will feature craft talks and poetry readings, as well as a late-night coffeehouse and poetry jam. Year-round community outreach events, including visits to schools and performances at Morikami Museum, will generate interest in and awareness about the annual poetry festival.
Bio: The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the writing, reading, performance and appreciation of poetry by presenting an annual festival and other poetry events in Palm Beach County featuring America’s finest poets. Its goal is to provide a nationally recognized learning opportunity for writers of poetry and a world-class, life-enriching series of cultural events for our listening audiences. As a Florida nonprofit corporation, part of the festival’s mission is to organize educational outreach programs that bring the pleasures of poetry to the community year round.

Recipient: Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs
Project: CultureDeal
Award: $40,000
Summary: To help arts groups expand their audience, the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs will partner with an online coupon site to offer a cultural “deal-of-the-week.” Every week, the site will feature an “unbeatable deal” on the best cultural activities to do and see in Miami. The county will brand CultureDeal and market it through social media and online advertising, offering high-value, income-earning deals for local arts activities. The project aims to boost local arts groups in their efforts to sell tickets and memberships, target younger audiences, convert occasional ticket buyers into subscribers and create a model that can be replicated nationally.
Bio: The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council and the Art in Public Places Trust develop cultural excellence, diversity and participation throughout Miami-Dade County by strategically creating, improving and promoting opportunities for artists and cultural organizations, and residents and visitors. Three central goals serve as guideposts for their work: 1) securing more public and private resources to invest in and promote cultural development, 2) developing better cultural facilities in neighborhoods throughout Miami-Dade and improving the visual quality of the county’s built environment and 3) making cultural activities more accessible for residents and visitors. The department promotes, coordinates and supports Miami-Dade County’s more than 1,100 not-for-profit cultural organizations as well as thousands of resident artists through grants, technical assistance, public information and interactive community planning.

Recipient: WLRN
Project: ArtStreetMiami.org
Award: $40,000
Summary: To expose and promote Miami artists globally, WLRN will create a series of original, collaborative videos for the Web. ArtStreetMiami.org, the project’s online platform, will broadcast original videos designed to promote the artists and enhance the image of Miami as an art center. The project will also produce an anthology of the videos in an hour-long documentary for distribution statewide.
Bio: WLRN is a public radio and television station in South Florida. WLRN Radio signed on in 1948 as a nonprofit, noncommercial broadcast station licensed to the school board of Dade County. WLRN-TV followed in 1955. Since then, WLRN has grown steadily to become an integral part of the community we serve, offering a rich and varied mix of news and information, arts and culture, childhood education and lifelong learning. ArtStreet is its locally produced half-hour program about arts, culture and entertainment in South Florida.

Recipient: The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum
Project: The Museum of the Future
Award: $35,000
Summary: To expand and enhance the museum’s impact, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum will integrate new media and technologies into exhibits. The project will enable the museum to reach broader audiences and engage them in the uplifting nature of the arts. The museum will build a technology infrastructure to facilitate the creation of online communities through video, podcasts, online chats, high-quality webcasts and mobile apps. Live feeds will be streamed to interactive kiosks at the museum entrance. The museum’s internal system will receive an upgrade so the staff can log in from anywhere in the world.
Bio: The mission of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University is to enrich and educate local, national and international audiences through the language of art by collecting, preserving, researching, interpreting and exhibiting art from diverse cultures throughout human history. The Frost Art Museum, located within a large urban institution, provides an exceptional resource for scholarly research and interdisciplinary collaboration, augmenting the university’s educational mission as both a local and global center of knowledge and culture. Over 50,000 visitors have come to The Frost Art Museum since its opening its new building in November 2008. The Frost is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is a Smithsonian affiliate.

Recipient: Art and Culture Center of Hollywood
Project: Hot Topics Discussion Series
Award: $25,000
Summary: To engage South Florida in new contemporary art ideas and national trends, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood will host a series of five interactive presentations featuring prominent guest speakers. The Hot Topics Discussions Series will focus on current issues influencing the direction of contemporary art in the United States. The project also will explore the role the arts play in community life and advance awareness of the center and its advocacy efforts.
Bio: The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood (ACCH) is an independent nonprofit that operates visual arts galleries in the 1924 Kagey House, an art school adjacent to the main facility and a 500-seat theater in downtown Hollywood. The center was incorporated on Aug. 31, 1978, and is one of just seven organizations in Broward County – out of 550 – to be designated a major cultural institution. Each year, ACCH presents more than a dozen contemporary gallery exhibitions, more than 70 arts-education program activities for children and adults, and a free or low-cost performance series for families.

Recipient: William Stewart
Project: Rhythm of Africa Music Program
Award: $25,000
Summary: To celebrate African rhythms and history, musician William Stewart will offer percussion classes for children and produce community performances. The project will involve at least 30 teenagers, ages 13-16, with limited musical experience, in an intensive program of music education in rhythm and percussion. The group will work with professional musicians and technicians, create and rehearse musical selections and ultimately perform for schools and general audiences, including the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale. The program will strive to create positive behavioral and cognitive impact through the children’s exposure to and intimacy with learning and making music. Another goal is to replicate the program throughout the region to reach more students, schools and communities.
Bio: Master percussionist Willie Stewart was born in England in 1953 to Jamaican parents who moved the family to Jamaica when he was young. For 23 years he was director and percussionist for the band Third World. Stewart has performed with Stevie Wonder, Eddy Grant, Carlos Santana and Bob Marley. In 1980, he coproduced a 12-hour concert during Nelson Mandela’s visit to Jamaica. A recipient of the United Nations Peace Medal, the “Reggae Ambassador” has adopted the mission to share his knowledge and experience with people of all ages. Working with children, teachers and corporations, he has created performances and workshops on musical techniques and worldwide cultural influences, emphasizing music’s universality and benefits for health, spiritual development, and character building. He remains active as a performer, assembling world-class musicians for concerts locally, nationally and internationally.

Recipient: Michael Bell
Project: Scholastic Writing Awards Program
Award: $20,000
Summary: Through an affiliation with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Writing Awards Program will help identify and motivate young writers. The project aims to foster a South Florida network of talented teen writers, encouraging participation from more than 400 public and private schools serving grades seven through 12. In the fall, the awards program will issue a call for submissions to all middle and high schools and conduct a workshop for teachers. Best works will compete nationally as American Voices Nominees and Regional Gold Key finalists. Winners will participate in a summer workshop for teen writers and attend a national awards ceremony.
Bio: A native Miamian, Michael Bell has spent much of his adult life developing the literary talent South Florida’s teen writers. Bell’s journey started in 1979, as a special education teacher for Miami-Dade’s public schools, where creative writing opportunities helped to give voice to his students. Prior to his retirement from the Miami-Dade school district last year, Bell served in a variety of capacities for the school system, ranging from his early days as a classroom teacher to assistant superintendent of school choice programs. At each career juncture, Bell continued to volunteer his time to support the development and validation of local teen writers vis-à-vis the implementation of creative writing programs for the Miami-Dade County Fair & Expo (27 years) and the Miami-Dade Region of The Scholastic Writing Awards (six years).

2009
$3.7 Million

Recipient: BankAtlantic Foundation
Award: $100,000
Summary: BankAtlantic Foundation will expose more students to the arts by expanding a program that partners arts nonprofits with schools. To do that, BankAtlantic managers from more than 30 locations across South Florida will team up with a local organization and an elementary school. Together, they will organize field trips or in-class presentations by visual and performing artists.
Applicant: Founded in 1994, the BankAtlantic Foundation’s mission is to enhance the quality of life in the Florida communities served by BankAtlantic. Working together to carry out the mission, the BankAtlantic Foundation and BankAtlantic associates give their time, talent, and resources to help children and families in need, provide arts and cultural exposure to the broader community, support education and a wide scope of nonprofit organizations and charitable causes in support of our community. For information, visit title=”http://www.bankatlantic.com/bafoundation/”>www.bankatlantic.com/bafoundation/.

Recipient: Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival
Award: $70,000
Summary: The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival will celebrate global cultures and foster dialogue in South Florida through a free film and community discussion series called Around the World in 80 Nights. Local groups whose country or ethnicity is represented on screen will introduce the film, facilitate a Q & A period and, whenever possible, enlighten the audience about their local community and customs.
Applicant: Now entering its 25th year The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival is the world’s longest and Florida’s biggest film festival. While the festival runs 21 days Oct. 22 – Nov. 11, 2010, there are also year-round screenings at a variety of venues. The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival is truly a vacation from ordinary film. Visit www.FLIFF.com.

Recipient: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Award: $200,000
Summary: The Coral Gables garden will expose new audiences to contemporary art by exhibiting large-scale outdoor sculpture among its expansive trees and foliage. Guests will have the opportunity to take in the beauty of the garden and learn about fruit and vegetable gardens, tropical plants, native species and conservation while enjoying the artists’ works.
Applicant: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is dedicated to exploring, explaining and conserving the world of tropical plants. It is one of the premier research and education-based gardens in the world and a recognized international leader in conservation. Fairchild houses the National Palm and Cycad Collections as recognized by the American Public Gardens Association (APGA); an education program reaching nearly 60,000 school children per year; hosts popular events like the International Mango, Orchid and Chocolate Festivals, the Ramble, concerts, affiliated plant society shows and sales and more; partners with communities and schools to establish edible gardens, and, is a not-for-profit organization relying on the support of its 45,000 members and benefactors. Visit www.fairchildgarden.org

Recipient: Florida Grand Opera
Award: $200,000
Summary: “Opera FREE-FOR-ALL” aims to identify and cultivate a new audience for opera by holding a drawing for free tickets to a 2010 performance of Carmen. Some 2,200 tickets will be given away to the public through a chance-giveaway. Those entries not receiving free tickets will get a code entitling them to purchase a ticket to a different performance of Carmen at a discount.
Applicant: Florida Grand Opera, celebrating its 69th anniversary season of continuous performances, stands as the oldest performing arts organization in Florida and the seventh oldest opera company in America. Florida Grand Opera is one of the resident companies of The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, where it presents its Miami performances in the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House. Fort Lauderdale performances of each production are given at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Today, Florida Grand Opera serves the seventh largest opera audience in the country. Visit www.fgo.org.

Recipient: Friends of the Bass Museum
Award: $240,000
Summary: IDEA@theBass aims to promote imaginative thinking among early elementary school children through a curriculum-based art program. Developed by the Bass Museum of Art in conjunction with Stanford University’s acclaimed d.school (Institute of Design), IDEA fuses art with Design Thinking, a creative process focused on building ideas by withholding judgments (i.e., there is no right or wrong). This method of problem-solving eliminates fear of failure and encourages brainstorming and prototyping. Miami-Dade teachers, who will be trained at the museum, will employ the curriculum at school and then invite students to the Bass’ Free Family Sundays where there will be coordinated activities.
Applicant: The mission of the Bass Museum of Art is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret the visual arts for the residents and visitors of the City of Miami Beach, Miami-Dade County and Southeast Florida. The museum achieves its purpose by developing and mounting exhibitions from its permanent collection and presenting loan exhibitions from local, national and international collections. In 2009-10, the vision of the museum is to create relationships between art from the past and contemporary art. Its education and outreach programs strive to broaden communication with diverse audiences while deepening the art experience of school children and visitors. Visit www.bassmuseum.org.

Recipient: Girls’ Club
Award: $10,000
Summary: This grant will nurture the career of Miami artist Frances Trombly by supporting an exhibit at Girls’ Club, an alternative gallery space dedicated to contemporary female artists. Girls’ Club will commission Trombly to create an exhibit of hand-woven canvasses entitled “Paintings.” An accompanying limited edition artist’s book will be produced with hand-woven pages and a text commissioned by a recognized arts writer. The exhibit will provide Trombly the opportunity to realize an ambitious project, while increasing Girls’ Club’s stature and the awareness of cultural offerings in Fort Lauderdale.
Applicant: Founded in 2006 by Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, Girls’ Club is a 501(C)3 foundation and alternative space exhibiting contemporary art by women. Cutting edge works in diverse media are presented in exhibitions free and open to the public for a full year. Girls’ Club is located in a dynamic building designed by Margi Nothard of Glavovic Studio in Fort Lauderdale. Girls’ Club’s mission is to educate the public, nurture the careers of female artists and to serve as a resource for art students, scholars, curators and practicing artists. A special commitment is made to expose the work of local artists to a broader national and international audience. Girls’ Club is committed to inspiring individuals and raising the level of cultural offerings in Broward County. Visit www.girlsclubcollection.org.

Recipient: The LightBox at Goldman Warehouse
Award: $400,000
Summary: This grant will help create an arts incubator in the Wynwood Arts District by funding The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse. The space will house offices for multiple performing arts organizations; separate rehearsal, performance and recording studios; a visual arts gallery and a lounge/café within its 12,000 square feet. Spearheaded by Tony Goldman and Miami Light Project, this project aims to reduce costs across the board for several nonprofit arts organizations, encourage further artistic collaboration between organizations and artists and serve as a catalyst for growth and development in Wynwood by offering year round performance and cultural programming.
Applicants:
Founded in 1989, Miami Light Project is a not-for-profit cultural organization which presents live performances by innovative dance, music and theater artists from around the world; supports the development of new work by South Florida-based artists; and offers educational programs for students of every age. Since its inception, Miami Light Project has reached a diverse cross-section of communities throughout Miami-Dade County with an extensive outreach effort that includes partnerships with other arts organizations, universities and social service agencies. Miami Light Project is a cultural forum to explore some of the issues that define contemporary society. Visit www.miamilightproject.com
For more than 40 years, Goldman Properties has recognized the value in depressed urban areas, created a vision of their future and rejuvenated them, transforming declining historical and arts districts into thriving global destinations. Utilizing this approach, Tony Goldman was a driving force behind the transformation of the Upper West side, the Wall Street Financial District and Soho in lower Manhattan, Center City in Downtown Philadelphia and the Art Deco District in Miami Beach. He is now applying his vision, experience and expertise to the evolving Wynwood Arts District in Miami. Visit www.goldmanproperties.com.

Recipient: Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation
Award: $15,000
Summary: In order to increase appreciation for the literary arts in South Florida, the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation will launch an author reading series. At these events, the audience will have a chance to hear from and interact with some of the world’s best-known contemporary poets.
Applicant: The Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation, Inc. was born with goals to be true to the highest standards of poetry, ethical standards and moral values exemplified by the late poet Hannah Kahn, a resident of Miami for almost 50 years. Kahn wrote more than 400 poems, and saw many of them published in two of her own books, Eve’s Daughter, and Time, Wait; anthologies and national magazines. She was poetry editor for the Miami Herald for 16 years, and winner of the International sonnet competition of the Poetry Society of Great Britain and America, as well as other national and international awards. Following her death in 1988, a group of her former students and colleagues established the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation, which sponsors poetry readings, scholarships, contests and worthwhile causes. Visit www.hannahkahn.org.

Recipient: Kathleen Hudspeth
Award: $150,000
Summary: Turn-Based Press will promote a culture of printmaking by creating a communal print shop serving the arts community. The organization will offer expertise in addition to tools and materials to artists for the production and investigation of print and book arts. Equipment may include an etching press, letterpress, screen-printing equipment and bookbinding related items.
Applicant: Miami native Kathleen Hudspeth has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in Printmaking. Her work has been in numerous local and national venues, including the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, the Bass Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Her critical writings have been published in Art Papers, The Sun Post, and her (now defunct) blog, The Next Few Hours. She has been a visiting critic and lecturer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, and a volunteer docent for eight years at the Miami Art Museum. Hudspeth has been interested in starting a community print shop since 1995. Aware of the complexities of such an endeavor, Hudspeth deferred her dream in favor of garnering more experience in both art and business. This past spring, approaching her upcoming graduation from the University of Miami, Hudspeth finally felt the time was right to begin to realize this long-term goal.

Recipient: Locust Projects, Inc.
Award: $100,000
Summary: “Locust Projects: Out of the Box” is a new initiative that will increase exposure to contemporary art by commissioning site-specific, public artworks. Created by a different artist each year, the work will be exhibited on a high profile billboard in Miami-Dade. The experimental project aims to challenge the billboard as a tool for commercial advertising while giving artists an opportunity to reconsider their own artistic practice.
Applicant: Locust Projects is an alternative, not for profit exhibition space dedicated to providing contemporary visual artists the freedom to experiment with new ideas without the pressures of gallery sales or limitations of conventional exhibition spaces. Artists are encouraged to create site-specific installations as an extension of their representative work and Locust Projects offers them a vibrant Miami experience to develop their ideas and methods. Locust Projects is committed to offering an approachable and inviting venue for the Miami and international art community to experience the work and meet the artist. Visit www.locustprojects.org.

Recipient: Miami City Ballet, Inc.
Award: $900,000
Summary: This grant will showcase Miami City Ballet and the region’s cultural significance by providing orchestral accompaniment during the 2010-13 repertory seasons. The ballet canceled its orchestral agreement mid-season last year because of a lack of funding. Returning the orchestra to the pit, beginning with the milestone 25th anniversary season, will help the Ballet maintain its national reputation, enhance performances and create 45 jobs for musicians.
Applicant: In 1985, a leading Miami arts advocate, Toby Lerner Ansin, invited Edward Villella to consult with her and several associates about founding a classical ballet company in South Florida. A year later, Miami City Ballet’s first performance began with choreography by George Balanchine. Indeed, Balanchine – for whom Villella had danced for 18 years at New York City Ballet – became the foundation of both the Company’s repertory and style. Miami City Ballet holds the largest Balanchine repertory after the New York City Ballet and has also triumphed performing masterpieces by Jerome Robbins, Marius Petipa, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor and many others. With its international dancers, and those developed through the Company’s school, Miami City Ballet has won a tremendous national and international reputation – and in under 25 years. It annually performs at major venues in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Naples, Florida and tours nationally. Visit www.miamicityballet.org.

Recipient: Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Award: $125,000
Summary: This grant will increase opportunities for blind and sighted artists by expanding the center’s unique music inclusion program, which helps develop marketable job skills while fostering talent. Participants will write and perform songs while mastering full production skills under the tutelage of skilled professionals. This program is a national model for inclusion and workforce development, with several former participants now employed in the mainstream music industry.
Applicant: The Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, founded in 1931, is the largest and oldest private agency serving the visually impaired in Florida and has unique training programs with a national reputation for best practices that lead to mainstream employment for the visually impaired, such as, its music production program. Other programs at the Miami Lighthouse include early intervention services for mothers of blind babies, summer camps for visually impaired children, vocational rehabilitation and job training for adults, independent living skills for seniors, low vision assessments and free eye care to needy children who have no way to get eye examinations and glasses after they fail their vision screening at their school. Visit www.miamilighthouse.org.

Recipient: Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs
Award: $20,000
Summary: The Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs will launch CultureClassifieds.com, a one-stop, online source for free classified postings to serve the local arts community. This dedicated platform will offer listings to buy, sell, loan or donate equipment and materials needed by artists and cultural groups, ranging from computers and office equipment to theater lighting and sound equipment. Notices will be posted for job openings and for activities like workshops, classes, arts conferences and professional development opportunities. Resource sharing and collaboration are key survival strategies, especially in the current economy. CultureClassifieds.com is an innovative way to create a virtual marketplace for the exchange of materials, equipment, information and opportunities.
Applicant: The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council develop cultural excellence, diversity and participation throughout Miami-Dade County by strategically creating and promoting opportunities for artists and cultural organizations, and the residents and visitors who are their audiences. The department directs the Art in Public Places program and its board, the Art in Public Places Trust, commissioning, curating, maintaining and promoting the county’s art collection. The department, the council and the trust advance, coordinate and support Miami-Dade County’s more than 1,000 not-for-profit cultural organizations as well as thousands of resident artists through: grants and technical assistance, cultural facilities development and improvement, arts education programs and more. Visit www.miamidadearts.org.

Recipient: New World Symphony
Award: $75,000
Summary: The symphony’s Sound and Sight Video Series seeks to transform the way the audience experiences live classical music by projecting video and/or images choreographed to specific pieces during performances. As a part of this series, this grant will fund a visually enhanced work that will be premiered during the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Symphony campus.
Applicant: The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy (NWS), is dedicated to the artistic, professional and personal development of outstanding young musicians. Its fellowship program provides top graduates of music programs in the United States the opportunity to enhance their music education with the finest professional training. After an intensive three-year program of performance and training, NWS Fellows emerge from the experience prepared for professional positions in orchestras and ensembles around the world. In the 21 years since its founding, more than 730 alumni have gone on to make a difference in the music profession worldwide. In the hopes of joining this program, over 1,000 musicians compete for about 35 available fellowships each year. Visit www.nws.edu.

Recipient: The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County
Award: $200,000
Summary: With this grant, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County will broaden local appreciation for gospel music by continuing its Free Gospel Sundays program for a third and fourth year. The series celebrates the gospel tradition with concerts open to the public in the Knight Concert Hall. Performers include local gospel soloists and choirs and nationally recognized headlining artists.
Applicant: As a focal point of greater Miami-Dade’s diverse cultural life, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County enlightens, educates and entertains the South Florida community through transformational arts and cultural experiences. The Adrienne Arsht Center is a Miami venue not only for its three resident companies (Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet and New World Symphony), but also for many smaller South Florida arts organizations that perform in its theaters on a regular basis, as well as for the finest popular and classical performances from around the world. With state-of-the-art performance facilities in Miami for the first time, the center offers South Florida audiences the best and most diverse theater, music, and dance-with a dedication to entertain, challenge, and educate all segments of the community. Visit www.arshtcenter.org.

Recipient: Sweat Records, Inc.
Award: $150,000
Summary: This grant will help Sweat Records, a store and community resource that offers live performances, film screenings and an art gallery, strengthen and expand its cultural offerings. Sweat Records will hold additional workshops on a variety of cultural and educational topics. In addition, Sweat Records will develop an e-commerce site showcasing music and other goods made in South Florida.
Applicant: Sweat Records was established in 2005 in order to unite and strengthen Miami’s growing independent music scene. After surviving Hurricane Wilma destroying its first location, Sweat has settled into its permanent home: a full storefront, organic coffee bar and event space next door to Churchill’s Pub in Little Haiti. Sweat supports local artists and presents over 100 diverse events every year to further enrich Miami’s cultural offerings. Visit www.sweatrecordsmiami.com.

Recipient: Teatro Avante
Award: $150,000
Summary: Teatro Avante will elevate the importance of Hispanic theater in Miami by expanding its 25th annual International Hispanic Theatre Festival in 2010. The educational component, co-sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College and Mexico’s Rodolfo Usigli Theatre Research Center, in collaboration with the Mexican Cultural Institute in Miami, will include a conference on Latin American theatre, post-performance forums, visual art and other exhibits.
Applicant: Founded in 1979, Teatro Avante is a non-profit cultural organization whose mission is to preserve the Hispanic cultural heritage through the presentation and production of theatre from around the world. The company has staged works by major Hispanic and non-Hispanic contemporary and classical playwrights and represented the United States at festivals in Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1994, the Atlanta Olympic Committee’s Cultural Olympiads honored Teatro Avante with the Regional Arts Award, and since 1995 Teatro Avante has received four prestigious international prizes – Spain’s “FIT de Cadiz-Atahualpa del Cioppo,” “Federico García Lorca” and “Ollantay” awards and Bolivia’s “Kusillo.” Teatro Avante is a producing and presenting organization, and the award-winning International Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami is one of its achievements. Visit www.teatroavante.com.

Recipient: UNCF/United Negro College Fund
Award: $80,000
Summary: This grant will expand the public’s knowledge of a culturally significant musical instrument by supporting the Florida Memorial University Steel Band program through scholarships. The funds will cover a portion of tuition plus expenses involved with touring and an annual youth festival. The students will travel to the Steel Band Festival at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida and take part in Florida Memorial University’s annual Youth Steel Festival, now in its 10th year. The grant will help students gain experience in arranging, band management and production.
Applicant: UNCF is the nation’s oldest and most successful minority higher education assistance organization. UNCF’s mission is to increase minority degree attainment by reducing financial barriers to college. UNCF administers more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship and fellowship programs, mentoring and summer enrichment programs and provides financial support to its 39 member institutions. UNCF supports more than 60,000 students at over 900 colleges and universities across the country, including at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. Visit www.uncf.org.

Recipient: The Wolfsonian/Florida International University Foundation
Award: $500,000
Summary: This project, entitled The Art of Illumination, will expand the Wolfsonian’s reach by converting the museum’s exterior facades into public exhibition spaces, using the latest digital technology and lighting systems. The images will range from large-scale digital reproductions of pieces in the museum’s collection to contemporary works that convey the museum’s mission to illuminate the active role of design in shaping every day life experiences. The technology will be flexible to allow for displays in a variety of formats, including images, video, film, photography and static and/or moving text – even interactive mobile technology. The project will elevate the museum as a civic landmark while contributing to Miami Beach’s reputation as a center for art and design.
Applicant: The Wolfsonian-FIU is a museum and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern and to tell the story of social, historical and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 120,000 objects from the period of 1885 to 1945 – the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the Second World War – in a variety of media. The Wolfsonian encourages people to see objects in new ways, to learn from the past as they shape the present and influence the future. Since 1997, The Wolfsonian has been a division within Florida International University, one of the youngest, most dynamic and fastest growing urban universities in the United States. Visit www.wolfsonian.org.

Recipient: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Award: $80,000
Summary: This grant will highlight Vizcaya’s historic and artistic importance by commissioning site-specific contemporary artworks inspired by this National Historic Landmark. The works will be on display for a minimum of two to three months. Vizcaya also will host companion educational programs for the public. The program aims to encourage new perspectives on Vizcaya’s history, spaces and collections while enhancing its role as a place for innovative artistic production.
Applicant: Vizcaya was built by American businessman James Deering, who wintered on the property from 1916-1925. Adapting European traditions in architecture, décor and garden design to the Miami subtropical environment, Vizcaya was one of the grandest American estates of its time. Today, Vizcaya includes a house filled with art and furnishings, ten acres of gardens, a hardwood forest and a group of original buildings. Vizcaya is a National Historic Landmark, owned and operated by Miami-Dade County and accredited by the American Association of Museum. Visit www.vizcayamuseum.org.

2008
$8 million

Title: Private: Art + Research Residency Program
Winner: The University of Miami
Applicant: U.M. President Donna Shalala
Amount: $1.8 million
Summary: To create a post-graduate residency program for up-and-coming artists, to be mentored by renowned international artists.*

Title: Miami Music Project
Winner: Miami Music Project
Applicant: James Judd and Juvenal Correa-Salas
Amount: $1 million
Summary: To extend the joy of music to students in Miami-Dade schools through a year-round classical education program culminating in an annual festival with performances by youth and professional musicians

Title: Miami World Cinema Center
Winner: Miami World Cinema Center
Applicant: Patrick de Bokay, Sam Rega, Josh Miller
Amount: $750,000
Summary: To assist the prosperity of the Miami’s independent film community by establishing an extensive institute for connecting, funding and advising local film makers

Title: Miami Choral Project
Winner: Seraphic Fire, Inc.
Applicant: Patric Dupré Quigley
Amount: $684,750
Summary: To use music and teamwork to stimulate under appreciated neighborhoods by building youth choirs across greater Miami

Title: YoungArts
Winner: National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts
Applicant: Christina DePaul
Amount: $600,000
Summary: To develop young South Florida artists by creating a new regional competition as part of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ youngARTS program

Young At Art Childrens Museum
Winner: Young At Art of Broward
Applicant: Mindy Shrago
Amount: $500,000
Summary: To create the first art museum specially designed for children

The Studio Initiative / LegalArt Residency
Winner: LegalArt
Applicant: LegalArt
Amount: $400,000
Summary: To ensure longevity for the careers of local artists through a program that will provide permanent affordable work space, housing and legal counseling

Title: O Cinema, The Independent
Winner: Living Arts Trust, Inc.
Applicant: Kareem Tabsch and Vivian Marthell
Amount: $400,000
Summary: To construct Miami’s first art-house cinema so that the community can experience gripping, educational and thought provoking independent films

Title: Classical South Florida
Winner: Classical South Florida
Applicant: Doug Evans, President
Amount: $250,000
Summary: To ensure the development of South Florida’s only classical radio station by supplying challenge funds to motivate listeners’ financial support.

Title: Ballet + Orchestra Collaboration
Winner: Miami City Ballet
Applicant: Dan Lewis, Mike Eidson
Amount: $250,000
Summary: To support an artistic collaboration between the Cleveland Orchestra and the Miami City Ballet.

Title: Here & Now Festival
Winner: Miami Light Project
Applicant: Beth Boone
Amount: $200,000
Summary: To increase the development of original, locally produced performance art through expanding the accomplished Here & Now Festival

Title: Downtown Miami Concert Series
Winner: Miami Downtown Development Authority
Applicant: Leo Zabezhinsky
Amount: $150,000
Summary: To offer a new concert series, create a sense of community and increase entertainment offerings in Downtown Miami.

Title: ArtCenter South Florida
Winner: ArtCenter South Florida
Applicant: Jeremy Chestler
Amount: $150,000
Summary: To give local artists access to computers and cutting-edge software by constructing a digital arts center.

Title: Bas Fisher Invitational
Winner: Bas Fisher Invitational
Applicant: Naomi Fisher, Jim Drain, Kathryn Marks
Amount: $150,000
Summary: To provide young, unrepresented artists with free exhibition space and events by supporting a local art gallery.

Title: Sleepless Night
Winner: City of Miami Beach
Applicant: Gary Farmer
Amount: $150,000
Summary: To continue providing artists and residents with a free, city-wide celebration of the arts by installing Sleepless Night as an annual Miami Beach tradition

Title: Hemisphere Festival
Winner: Performing Arts Center Trust
Applicant: Larry Wilker
Amount: $100,000
Summary: To plan for an annual performing arts festival celebrating hemispheric art

Title: Free Gospel Sundays
Winner: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Applicant: Scott Schiller, executive Vice President
Amount: $100,000
Summary: To provide free, monthly gospel concerts at the Arsht Center

Title: ArtSeen
Winner: New World School of the Arts
Applicant: Mercedes Quiroga
Amount: $90,000
Summary: To allow student artists to exhibit their work by creating a multipurpose exposition space in Wynwood with a focus on education and community outreach and participation. at the New World School of the Arts

Title: Giants in the City
Winner: ArtFormz, LLC
Applicants: Alejandro Mendoza and Alette Simmons-Jimenez
Amount: $90,000
Summary: To create an outdoor exhibit of 10 giant, inflatable sculptures to be displayed in Miami’s Bayfront Park during Art Basel week

Haitian Jazz Series
Winner: Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center
Applicant: Gepsie Metellus
Amount: $80,000
Summary: To expose the community to a major part of South Florida’s cultural background through the creation of a live Haitian jazz series

Title: Miami Poster Project
Winner: Philp Brooker
Applicant: Philp Brooker
Amount: $75,000
Summary: To inspire pride and participation in Miami’s developing cultural scene by creating an annual poster competition based around capturing the spirit of the city

Title: Key Biscayne Public Art
Winner: Village of Key Biscayne
Applicant: Jud Kurlancheek
Amount: $75,000
Summary: To create two new plazas designed by artist Jose Bedia on the southern part of Key Biscayne that will highlight South Florida’s environment

Naomi Fisher Performance Works
Winner: Naomi Fisher
Applicant: Naomi Fisher
Amount: $40,000
Summary: To promote South Florida’s inherent relationship with art and the environment through the launch of a series of performance art projects presented in outdoor spaces

Project: Paradise in a Parking Lot
Winner: Design and Architecture Senior High
Applicant: Stacey Mancuso, principal
Amount: $40,000
Summary: To convert an unused parking lot into a public art space for high school students to showcase their talent

Title: Support for Alternative Opera in Miami
Winner: Miami Lyric Opera
Applicant: Raffaele Cardone
Amount: $40,000
Summary: To help Miami’s alternative opera company promote and cultivate local talent while presenting quality operas.

Title: Leggo My Demo
Winner: Chris Chrebet
Applicant: Chris Chrebet
Amount: $30,000
Summary: To build South Florida’s reputation as a center for electronic music by establishing an internet-based community platform for networking and showcasing local talent

Title: Catalog for Art in Public Places
Winner: Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs
Applicant: Michael Spring, Director, Department of Cultural Affairs
Amount: $30,000
Summary: To increase the public’s awareness and appreciation of Miami-Dade’s Art in Public Places collection by creating an easily accessible digital inventory

Title: [NAME] Publications
Winner: NAME Publications Inc.
Applicant: Gean Moreno
Amount: $30,000
Summary: To increase exposure for local art and artists by developing a nonprofit publishing house for Miami-based art books

Title: Frost Museum Virtual Gallery
Winner: Florida International University
Applicant: Carol Damian, director
Amount: $25,000
Summary: To give permanent access to the Frost Museum’s extensive art collection through an interactive, virtual gallery.

Project: Upper Eastside Garden
Winner: Upper Eastside Garden
Applicant: Peter Rozek
Amount: $25,000
Summary: To use the Upper East Side Garden and its mini-golf course to display sculptures and murals made by local artists, and initiate an educational design program for children

Title: Twenty Twenty Projects
Winner: Twenty Twenty Projects
Applicant: Scott Murray
Amount: $20,000
Summary: To preserve the integrity of creative works by local artists during Art Basel by providing free display space without restrictions

Title: First Friday Jazz Jams
Winner: Gold Coast Jazz Society
Applicant: Pam Dearden
Amount: $18,000
Summary: To launch free, monthly jazz ‘jam’ sessions where students of all levels can play alongside professionals.
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