Last night, thirty-one South Florida art projects were awarded grants in the first year of the Knight Arts Partnership, a $40 million effort to bring South Floridians together through the arts. Winning projects include a two-year residency program for up-and-coming artists, a Little League-like network of children’s choirs, and giant, inflatable sculptures in Bayfront Park.

Onajídé Shabaka of Miami Art Exchange and artist Daniel Arsham were in attendance and offered their thoughts on the current Miami art scene:

Watch video of Miami Program Director Lorenzo Lebrija as well as videos of the winners and details for each grant on the Knight Arts site and in the press release.

Knight Foundation supports Miami’s Wolfsonian-Florida International University’s new poster exhibition “Thoughts on Democracy” through the Knight New Work Award. A video about the exhibit, which opened July 3rd, is below, followed by details on included artists and the inspiration for the exhibit.

“The Thoughts on Democracy exhibition is comprised of posters created by fifty-five leading contemporary artists and designers, invited by The Wolfsonian to create a new graphic design inspired by American illustrator Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” posters of 1943, which were recently gifted to the museum by Leonard A. Lauder.

Some of the participating artists involved in the project are Neville Brody, Seymour Chwast, Wim Crouwel, Elliott Earls, Richard Tuttle, Lawrence Weiner, Paula Scher, Francesco Vezzoli, Chip Kidd, and Italo Lupi, among others.

Rockwell’s images, reproduced by the U.S. Office of War Information for mass dissemination, communicated FDR’s vision of ‘a world founded upon four essential human freedoms’—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. The exhibition will be on view and free to the public in the museum’s lobby.”

At the July 3rd exhibit opening, visitors were asked for their thoughts on democracy. You can watch their responses on the Thoughts on Democracy blog.

What are your thoughts on democracy and this exhibit?

Editor’s note: Lorenzo Lebrija is the Program Director for the Knight Foundation community program in Miami and manages the Knight Arts Partnership, a new experimental art contest for South Florida, where the Knight Foundation is based.

The Knight Arts Partnership began with a simple premise: we don’t know all the answers, and great ideas are in the community. So, let’s ask for them. In the end, we received 1,643 applications with ideas for the arts in South Florida.

Yesterday, we announced to the community the 77 finalists for the Knight Arts Partnership. Our next step is to see whether the ideas, when explained further, are as good as the quick descriptions. Are the groups or individuals right to carry them out? Do they have a plan to raise the match of our funds? We’re excited to find out.

Not all 77 finalists will secure grants (we only have $4 million!), but we have a good pool from which some ideas, when fully developed, will stand out.

It’s going to be an interesting summer!

Editor’s note: Meredith Hector is the Program Director for the Knight Foundation community program in Bradenton and Assistant to the V.P. of Communities.

Like most Florida communities, Bradenton is struggling to weather the “perfect storm” of property tax increases, rising insurance costs, housing market declines and budget cuts (the county just announced $44 million in cuts and the elimination of 88 positions). So it was nice to be at a press conference yesterday to help deliver a bit of good news on the economic front.

Along with Mayor Wayne Poston, Manatee Chamber of Commerce president Bob Bartz, and Bradenton’s Downtown Development Authority executive director Mike Kennedy, I announced the newly formed Bradenton Cultural and Business Alliance (BCBA).

BCBA will work to strengthen the local economy and transform downtown Bradenton and Manatee County into an exciting cultural destination. The efforts of the thirteen BCBA members will build upon Bradenton’s existing cultural assets, including the Manatee Players, the South Florida Museum, ArtCenter Manatee, and the Village of the Arts.

The grant monies made it possible to hire Bill Bulick - a noted arts consultant from Portland, Oregon who will lead the efforts to create a cultural plan in the coming year.

Additionally, the grant enables the BCBA to visit another community that has a successful cultural plan, as well as providing operating and marketing support to the Arts Council of Manatee County and the key cultural organizations mentioned above.

At the same time we made the BCBA grant, Knight also made a $20,000 grant to the Manatee Chamber Foundation so the Foundation could hire Americans for the Arts to conduct an economic impact study that will gauge the financial scope of the arts and culture in Manatee County.

Results are expected in early 2009, and combined with the work of the BCBA and Bill Bulick, should provide critical knowledge and help leverage the talents of key business leaders, city officials and cultural institutions for the economic benefit of the community.