26 past winners of the Knights Art Challenge

By Metro Times Staff on Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 2:29 pm

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 Knight’s commitment.

Find out more at knightarts.org.

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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 Detroit

Final Girls
Applicant: Final Girls
Award: $7,500
To support female filmmakers in Detroit through a filmmaking collective that will host workshops, screenings and master classes

The 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 book

Shannon 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 uprising