The 2017 Knight Arts Challenge, now in its fifth year in Detroit, is offering a share of up to $3 million to the best ideas for engaging and enriching Detroit through the arts.
A project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the challenge has awarded $9.46 million in matching grants, bringing to life 222 successful arts ideas in Detroit since its inception in 2013.
Knight Foundation funds the arts because of their ability to inspire communities and connect people to each other and to their city. The challenge is part of a two-pronged strategy that supports established arts institutions to help them better engage the public and funds grassroots initiatives of individual artists and organizations so that everyone has a chance to make their idea a reality.
There are only three rules for submissions:
1) The idea must be about the arts.
2) The project must take place in or benefit Detroit.
3) The grant recipients must find funds to match KnightÂ’s commitment.
12-and-Under Super Cool Poetry Open Mic Series
Applicant: 12-and-Under Super Cool Poetry Open Mic
Award: $15,000
To create a youth-driven open mic series, hosted by 10-year-old poet Thomas King Moore, at prominent cultural institutions in DetroitFinal Girls
Applicant: Final Girls
Award: $7,500
To support female filmmakers in Detroit through a filmmaking collective that will host workshops, screenings and master classesThe Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence
Applicant: Step Afrika! USA Inc.
Award: $84,722
To share the story of the Great Migration through dance, by bringing Step Afrika!’s full-length dance piece based on artist Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series to Detroit (Photo credit: Meredith Hanafi)What Pipeline Presents Pope.L in Detroit
Applicant: What Pipeline
Award: $30,000
To bring daring contemporary art to Detroit by inviting visual artist Pope.L for a unique exhibit and performance (Pictured: Pope L.)ARTS.BLACK
Applicant: ARTS.BLACK
Award: $15,000
To document and magnify the city’s arts scene with an online journal of critical discourse shared from the black perspective (Pictured: ARTS.BLACK founding editors Jessica Lynne (L) and Taylor Renee Aldridge (R))Beautifully Wrapped and the Head Wrap Expo
Applicant: Beautifully Wrapped
Award: $45,000
To explore themes of identity, fashion and cultural assimilation through “Beautifully Wrapped,”an interfaith, traveling exhibit on the art of head wrapping among Sikh Indians, Rastafarians, the Amish, Muslims and others (Photo credit: Maria Popi Photography)Detroit See Me
Applicant: Nichole Christian
Award: $6,000
To saturate the city with the faces of resilient and hopeful Detroit youth through a traveling exhibit and limited edition photo bookShannon Cason’s Homemade Stories Live
Applicant: Shannon Cason
Award: $65,000
To spotlight the best national and local storytellers through a monthly event, Homemade Stories Live (Photo credit: Reginald Eldridge)Detroit ’67 Rebellion: Inside and Out Applicant: Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History Award: $125,000 To use the arts to examine the 1967 civil unrest in historical context, and broaden the conversation around the city’s future, with a series of exhibitions, performance art and a memorial fence that will gather Detroiters’ reflections (Photo credit: Annistique Photography)Detroit ’67
Applicant: Detroit Public Theatre
Award: $60,000 To spark meaningful dialogue in communities and schools across the city with a mobile production of a play by native Detroiter Dominique Morisseau about a brother and sister who find themselves caught up in the uprisingDLECTRICITY Commissions Artist Rashaad Newsome
Applicant: Midtown Detroit
Award: $75,000
To strengthen DLECTRICITY by bringing multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome to debut a new video installation that explores Detroit’s history, and to lead a processional performance that opens the festival (Photo credit: David Lewinski Photography)JazzSpace Detroit: A Photographic Journey
Applicant: Barbara Barefield
Award: $20,000
To share Detroit’s musical heritage by creating a permanent, accessible archive of Barefield’s jazz photos, music posters and art, to update her 1979 book “JazzSpace Detroit,” and present a concert and exhibit representing 40 years of jazz and creative musicians.AfroFuture Past: Dance, Fashion and the Diaspora
Applicant: Bree Gant
Award: $8,000
To explore the intersection of African cultural traditions in Detroit’s art scene today with AfroFuturePast, which includes zines, short dance films and community eventsSave Yourself
Applicant: Britney Stoney
Award: $10,000
To share an artist’s creative journey by touring an original musical about following your dreamsHow Ma Bell Got Her Groove Back: Detroit for Real
Applicant: Focus: HOPE
Award: $164,750
To turn the historic Michigan Bell Telephone building into a canvas for Detroit stories by projecting on it new works of light art, video and photographsThe Taste of Displacement
Applicant: Jehan Mullin
Award: $15,000
To bring the multimedia artist, Dena Al-Adeeb, and her interactive art project, “The Taste of Displacement,” to Detroit where she will develop a site-specific piece that explores local Arab-American experiences through video and performance art.Wire-Car Auto Workers Association of Detroit (WAWAD)
Applicant: Wire-Car Auto Workers Association of Detroit (WAWAD)
Award: $7,300
To promote wire-car culture through an interactive website that serves as a resource for wire-car makers and enthusiasts, and to create a mobile parking structure to showcase models by association membersThe Other Hand
Applicant: A Host of People
Award: $25,000
To celebrate difference with a new experimental play and performance series exploring the in-between spaces of those who hold multiple identities of race, culture, gender and sexuality (Photo credit: John Del Gaudio)Dangerous Times, Dangerous Responses
Applicant: Alicia Diaz
Award: $79,359
To examine Detroit’s role as a sanctuary for Central American refugees in the 1980s through a multimedia exhibition (Photo credit: Damon J. Hartley)The Jit Exchange
Applicant: Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit
Award: $11,000 To unite dance styles from the same era, from two continents, by bringing Zimbabwean dancers to DetroitThe CAN Art Wind Turbine Project
Applicant: CAN Art Handworks
Award: $50,000
To engage Detroiters in a sustainability project in a playful manner by having artist Carl Nielbock create wind turbine sculptures in Eastern Market that power cellphone charging stations and help irrigate urban cropsJazz Violin “The Detroit Way”
Applicant: Detroit Youth Volume
Award: $51,623
To inspire the young classical violinists training with this group to become jazz musicians by employing local jazz artists as teachersPrisoner’s Song
Applicants: Greg Baise, Gelsey Bell, Erik Ruin
Award: $6,000
To explore the experience of the incarcerated and prison life in America through a multimedia performance presented at four neighborhood venues (Photo credit: Michael Yu)Not In My House: A Performance Celebrating LGBT Identity
Applicant: Kristi Faulkner Dance
Award: $30,000 To explore themes of identity and gender with an original performance work created with LGBT youth from the Ruth Ellis Center (Photo credit: Michael Sobczak)Detroit Storymakers Project
Applicant: WDET
Award: $100,000 To strengthen the craft of storytelling in Detroit by developing a network of multimedia artists and empowering them to share their stories with a wider audience – on the radio, online and in public spacesOn TAP Applicant: Young Nation
Award: $37,000
To support the development of local artists by turning garages into artists’ studios in addition to holding hip-hop arts workshops and experiences that culminate in a large public art project
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