Description
The Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund was a 5-year, $8M open call program that was conducted in four cities: Charlotte, Akron, Detroit, and Miami. I designed the Fund to provide critical technical infrastructure to both working artists and non-profit arts organizations in all four cities. The Fund provided support in five categories:
- Purchase and installation of hardware and/or software
- Technology infrastructure (e.g., live streaming, networking, outdoor projection)
- Staffing or contract support (e.g., developers, videographers, digital content managers)
- Website or mobile app development
- Digitization, archiving and digital preservation
Individual applicants could request up to $25K in support, and non-profit organizations up to $100K. Key to the intentions of the Fund is that it is not a project fund, but instead provides operational support to arts practitioners. This meant that, for instance, artists did not need to create new work in order to justify the purchase of new equipment. Instead, applicants were awarded based on their ability to identify technical resources that would improve their operational capacity over the long term.
What I did
I developed the application criteria and overall approach to the Expansion Fund. I ran the open calls themselves by managing incoming applications, conducting one-on-one office hours with applicants, running town halls, and managing reviewers.
Results
The Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund awarded over 100 grants in a five-year period. The grants ranged from the very small (a single iPad), to the very large (multi-year grants to support interactive lab spaces). The Fund, in some cases, allowed artists to produce digital archives & online portfolios of their work for the first time, which highlighted a real need for distributed archiving capacity in communities. Several arts organizations developed websites and/or social media strategies for the first time.
Project URL: Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund
Articles
- New Knight Foundation initiative to award grants totaling $250,000 to Akron-based artists, arts organizations - Cleveland.com
- How Charlotte’s Thriving Arts Ecosystem Has Created a City on the Rise - Art News
- Knight Foundation announces $400,000 in grants to increase ‘digital integration in the arts’ - WLRN