Detroit arts community gets $20M boost from Knight Foundation

Calling Detroit the new Berlin for its thriving arts scene, Alberto Ibargüen, president, CEO and trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, announced Wednesday that the nonprofit will invest $20 million in arts organizations in the city through 2023.

“Great art, tough art, challenging art helps to tell a great city’s own story. Nowhere is this more true that today’s Detroit,” said Alberto Ibarguen, president of the Knight Foundation. “This is the place where art, culture and design have changed the narrative of a community. And in the art world, Detroit has become the new Berlin."

The money will be split among several organizations, including:

• $2.5 million each to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall
• $1.5 million to the Sphinx Organization
• $1.325 million to the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan  
• $1 million to the Michigan Opera Theatre
• $750,000 to Creative Many Michigan, Inc.
• $500,000 to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
• $300,000 to Design Core Detroit via the College for Creative Studies
• $200,000 to CultureSource
• $100,000 each to the Arts League of Michigan, Concert of Colors via CultureSource, the Freep Film Festival, the Michigan Theater Foundation, the Heidelberg Project and Young Nation

In addition, the foundation announced it will spend $6 million over five years on the Knight Arts Challenge, which will continue biannually in 2019, 2021 and 2023, and $2.825 million more will be awarded to other yet-to-be-named organizations and projects.

"In the case of Detroit ... this is a place that is fast reinventing itself," Ibargüen said. "And if you're reinventing, you need storytellers. You need people to reinterpret. You need people to envision, to see what isn't there but could be. And what better than artists ... to be able to do that? That was the theoretical basis on which we started doing the funding."

Katy Locker, the Knight Foundation’s Detroit director, said the foundation awarded the anchor arts organizations — the DIA, the DSO, Sphinx, MOT and MOCAD —programming innovation grants so they can use experimentation and technology to connect with new audiences.

"They need to evolve to change with the changing marketplace that they serve," Locker said. "Each was asked to come to us and talk to us about what they're doing to continue to serve this community but to be responsive to a changing environment."

For the DSO, that could mean a future that includes regular live "wall-casting" of performances on the outside of the building, said Anne Parsons, president and CEO of the DSO. 

"The activity on Woodward is constantly increasing, the neighborhood has expanded its offerings and there’s much, much more street traffic," Parsons said. "Our façade doesn’t reflect what’s going on inside. It doesn’t let you really see yourself inside our building. This master plan for the front of the building is very ambitious and the Knight Foundation grant will allow us to engage audiences outside of the building will allow people to interact without having to go inside, digitally.

"We want the building to reflect that so people are curious and more engaged with what’s going on, and hopefully, cause them to come inside."

It'll also include planning to better use green space on Parsons and leverage the Cube with more multidisciplinary programming and partnerships.

For the DIA, the Knight Foundation money will be used to reevaluate its programs to ensure the museum's offerings are appealing art to diverse communities, said Salvador Salort-Pons, director, president and CEO of the DIA. 

"We believe also that this is a tool that is going to help diversify our audiences, so we are going to understand better the interests of the African-American communities, the interests of the Latino communities, the interests of the Arab-American communities, and the interests of the Asian communities, and so forth," Salort-Pons said. "So the technology will help us target these communities with programs and exhibitions that will serve them better and reflect who they are.

"It's very important for us as an organization that the museum is seen as a place for everyone, where everyone is welcome, and everyone can come in the museum and see themselves reflected."

Michigan Opera Theatre's Chief Development Officer Frankie Piccirilli said the organization will use its $1-million grant to hire a director of innovation, create a committee on community engagement, and present new, contemporary works. 

"Opera is a living, breathing art form, and Michigan Opera Theatre is committed to producing engaging, forward-thinking works reflective of and relevant to our region," Piccirilli said. 

The other Knight Foundation awards — going to the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Creative Many Michigan, Inc., Design Core, CultureSource, Arts League of Michigan, Concert of Colors, the Freep Film Festival, the Michigan Theater Foundation, the Heidelberg Project and Young Nation — are to be used to establish sustainable, long-term business models to bolster the city's theater, film, music, public arts and cultural programming, Locker said. 

"We really recognize that there's a Detroit theater community here of small, very high quality theater, and they don't necessarily have a network among themselves and they also are running on really small budgets," Locker said. "What might it mean if we gave them the opportunity to work together and we also gave them the resources to have enough to even have the staff to work together?"

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That's an exciting prospect, said Katie Brisson, vice president of program for the Community Foundation, which will announce in 2019 specifically which theater companies in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtrack will be selected for funding and support through the program. 

"The plan is to shape this over the next five years to utilize these funds to both help theaters today while allowing them time and technical support to build for tomorrow," Brisson said, noting that national consultants will help create plans for sustainability of these theater groups so they can "build a space where they can learn and grow together." 

Locker said she's also eager to see what ideas and innovations come from the $750,000 award to Creative Many.

"Creative Many will recognize the great artists we have in the community already and invite them to compete for an opportunity to develop new work," she said. 

To Cezanne Charles, director of Creative Industries, for Creative Many, said the Knight Foundation award is a stable investment in creativity and innovation. 

"Detroit is known for being a home base for research and development," she said. "We take the approach that ... artists need access to research and development funds that allow them to dream and work and ideate but without really the pressure to produce or present that a straightforward project grant might (require)."

The hope, she said, is that while the artists find freedom to innovate, Creative Many will, too. 

The Freep Film Festival also is getting a $100,000 grant. 

“We know that the Knight Foundation has deep commitments to journalism, the arts, and Detroit. Because Knight’s mission aligns so closely with what the fest stands for, the recognition felt especially meaningful," said Steve Byrne, executive director, Freep Film Festival. He said the money will bolster the festival’s staffing, and increase the profile of its programming.

Ibargüen said the Knight Foundation grants build on the infrastructure of artists and cultural institutions already deeply rooted in the city. 

"We are opportunists," Ibargüen said. "We don't fund need. We fund the opportunity, We find places to leverage and accelerate. I really want to emphasize the fact that while we are a charity ... we're really social investors. We're really after impact."

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.