Cultural Wealth: Knight Foundation Announces Winners of 2018 Knight Arts Challenge

The grants will support a wide range of ideas and initiatives throughout metro Detroit from individuals to institutions.

Andrew Potter

Click on the audio player to listen. CultureShift airs weekdays at 12 p.m. on Detroit’s public radio WDET 101.9FM.

On Wednesday, the 2018 Knight Arts Challenge announced its latest wave of grants making 25 Detroit-based artists, institutions and non-profits are now $1.5-million-dollars richer.

Funding everything from a festival hosted by the Arab American National Museum to a new public garden on Belle Isle, the grants support a wide range of ideas and initiatives.

WDET’s Ryan Patrick Hooper speaks with Adam Ganuza, a program officer for the Knight Foundation, about the importance of funding Detroit arts and culture.

The initial application process is relatively simple which “encourages people from all walks of life…to pitch their ideas no matter how ‘out there’ those ideas are,” Ganuza says. “(The applications) provides…a snapshot of a moment in time of what are the some of the things that are most on the minds of the creators in Detroit and highlights the creative ways which people are thinking about,” he adds.

You can see a full list of the grant awardees here.

Click the audio player above to hear the full conversation.

Author

  • Ryan Patrick Hooper inside the WDET studio.
    Ryan Patrick Hooper is the award-winning host of "In the Groove" on 101.9 WDET-FM Detroit’s NPR station. Hooper has covered stories for the New York Times, NPR, Detroit Free Press, Hour Detroit, SPIN and Paste magazine.