PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Thirty-five ideas for the arts in Philadelphia will receive $2.76 million as winners of the 2012 Knight Arts Challenge. Now in its second year, the community-wide challenge funds the best ideas for engaging and enriching Philadelphia through the arts.

Emerging from more than 1,260 submissions, the 2012 winners represent a wide range of Philadelphia’s creative thinkers, including artists Erica Hawthorne and Sean Stoops, small organizations like the Bearded Ladies Cabaret and the Little Berlin collective, and established institutions with innovative ideas.

“The cities that succeed, that offer the greatest quality of life, view every single person as a creative being,” said Dennis Scholl, Knight Foundation’s vice president for arts. “We hope the Knight Arts Challenge and its winners provide an added spark that inspires the community to build a better future together.”

This year’s winners will:

• Bring art into Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, through pop-up Latin jazz performances, “Site and Sound” gardens in Nicetown-Tioga and a campaign that will bring locally produced art to public advertising spaces near the place where the piece was produced.

• Transform communities through public art installations, such as a new steam- and water-inspired work in Dilworth Plaza, a permanent light installation at a Quaker meeting house and rotating, site-specific public art for the community and daily commuters at The Porch at 30th Street Station.

• Use the assets of larger organizations to benefit emerging artists, including a new black-box theater residency program at the Kimmel Center, an incubator for creative businesses at the University of the Arts and a teaching corps of tech-saavy art teachers at The Hacktory.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter declared April 23 Knight Arts Challenge Day in recognition of the initiative’s impact and its support for a broad spectrum of the creative community.

To date, 71 ideas have been awarded $5.4 million. A third round of the Knight Arts Challenge will open in the fall.

“We asked the community for their best ideas — and received an overwhelming response, showing the strength of this city’s creative community,” said Donna Frisby-Greenwood, Philadelphia program director for Knight Foundation.

The Knight Arts Challenge Philadelphia is open to anyone with a great idea for the arts. The challenge has just three rules: 1) The idea must be about the arts, 2) the project must take place in or benefit Philadelphia and 3) the grant recipients must find funds to match Knight’s commitment.

The Knight Arts Challenge began in 2008 in Miami, where the initiative is now in its fifth year. Philadelphia is the second city to which Knight has offered this program.
For more on Knight Foundation’s arts initiative and to view a full list of Knight Arts Challenge winners, visit www.KnightArts.org. Connect on the Knight Arts Challenge Facebook page here and via @KnightArts on Twitter.

For more detailed project descriptions, visit knightarts.org.