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On July 27, Knight Foundation will open a new call for ideas exploring how arts institutions can present immersive experiences to engage audiences. -
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Today, we launch On View, a new podcast series that examines how museums and cultural institutions are evolving to keep pace with a changing world. -
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Sometimes it is hard to find the poetry in technology. Though most people use technology as part of their daily life, the coldness of machines makes it easy to overlook the richness of human culture that flows through their circuits. Yet culture can move quickly, aided by our devices, whether it’s a virtual museum tour, a live-streamed concert or crowdsourced poetry. And we’re only at the beginning of this curve. Technology offers a myriad of opportunities for art, expanding how it challenges us, triggers reflection, awakens empathy and connects us to our communities. Innovations have the potential to provide arts organizations with new ways to connect with audiences and create deeply engaging experiences that inform and delight.But how do we ensure that arts organizations, and artists themselves, take advantage of these opportunities, instead of lagging behind their audiences in the adoption of technology? Today, Knight Foundation is opening a call for ideas focused on this issue. It centers around a question:How might cultural institutions use technology to connect people to the arts? -
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In March Knight Foundation, along with partners the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation, launched an open call for ideas around the question: How might we improve the flow of accurate information? As part of a larger initiative centered on trust in journalism, we were seeking projects that could be quickly built and to test ideas that respond to the challenges affecting the health of our news ecosystem and ultimately our democracy. Today, timed with the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Phoenix, we are announcing support for 20 projects aimed at combating the spread of misinformation online and increasing trust in journalism. The winning projects will receive a share of $1 million through the Knight Prototype Fund, a program focused on iterative and human-centered approaches to solving difficult problems. Along with the larger application pool of over 800 ideas, the projects align with three broad themes. -
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When we launched the Prototype Fund in 2012 our goal was to help innovators push media, journalism and civic information projects forward by giving them an avenue to build fast, fail forward and learn quickly. The initiative recognized that the speed of innovation, coupled with the low-cost of experimentation opened an opportunity for innovators to test, iterate and change direction before building out a project. This type of nimble, early-stage risk investment was new for Knight Foundation and new for philanthropy. We are relaunching the fund this month, with some changes based on what we have learned over the last five years. Most notably, future calls for ideas will focus on specific topics, a move from broad experimentation to targeted issues in the fields where Knight Foundation works. -
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In 2011 Knight Foundation partnered with the Mozilla Foundation to create the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project, as an effort to embed technologists within news organizations through a fellowship program. We sought to promote culture change and to help accelerate the needed transition to digital thinking.The project quickly took root, and in 2013 we followed up with an additional grant to help the program build in educational resources, conferences and convenings. Today, OpenNews centers around a growing community of journalism technologists and innovators who are on the frontlines of culture change as news organizations adapt to an increasingly digital world.OpenNews’ evolution, from bringing outside technologists to the journalism field, to a focus on strengthening a growing community of technologists and product developers within the news industry, has been, in part, informed by the experiences of the fellows over the years. Today, Knight Foundation is releasing a new report, prepared with Network Impact, that summaries much of what we’ve learned. The report shows that OpenNews’ events, educational resources and open source projects have contributed to the tech talent pipeline for news organizations and to a need to focus on newsroom culture change and adoption of best practices. This emphasis on developing and helping to sustain a thriving community of practice is at the heart of Knight Foundation’s new investment of $1.1 million in the next phase of OpenNews. -
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This post has been updated to reflect the Aug. 17, 2015 deadline for the Knight Prototype Fund. Nearly three years ago we started funding prototypes as a way to make small bets on exploratory work that promises to create new pathways for information that is essential for communities. We’ve focused on providing funding for broad experimentation at this early stage, designing a program that asks small teams to iteratively test their assumptions and share what they’ve learned. We now fund groups of prototype projects each quarter. In addition to $35,000, teams receive training in human-centered design and support from a data science team at Impact Lab to structure their learning objectives. At the end of six months, they meet to share what they’ve learned and the outcomes of their projects. The deadline for the next round of Prototype Fund grants is Aug. 17. Submitting an idea is easy; just answer five questions through our online form. This round of grants includes a diverse group of projects that explore novel uses of data, media and technology to inform people. Check out the 20 projects receiving support in this cohort below. Chris Barr is director of media innovation at Knight Foundation. Email him at [email protected] Apply for the Knight Prototype Fund at prototypefund.org.
