Knight Foundation Awards 5 Philadelphia Grants

The Knight Foundation is dedicated to making cities better through community investment. This year, five organizations in the City of Brotherly Love were chosen for grant awards to fund their city-improving projects. In total, the Philadelphia organizations were awarded about $5 million. According to the Foundation, there are three key elements driving city success: attracting talented people, expanding economic opportunity and creating a culture of civic engagement. Winning projects focused on one or more of those elements.

The Knight Foundation has awarded five grants in the City of Philadelphia for projects that help benefit the community.

Throughout the country, 33 winners were chosen by the Knight Foundation. Philadelphia tied with Detroit as having the most winners for 2017.

According to Philadelphia Magazine: “One winning Philadelphia idea, “A Dream Deferred: PHL Redlining—Past, Present, Future,” came from marketing and branding agency Little Giant Creative, which will receive $300,000. The project’s ambitious aim is to explore Philadelphia’s complex history of redlining through a series of convenings to discuss equitable community development.” Little Giant’s creative leaders, Meegan Denenberg and Tayyib Smith, won a Knight Cities Challenge grant for their project “The Institute of Hip Hop Entrepreneurship,” a creative business training project that combines hip hop and building a business.

A second Knight Foundation award went to the City of Philadelphia for the project “PHL Participatory Design Lab,” led by the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation and the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs. That grant was for $338,000 and will focus on finding ways to improve citizens’ experiences when dealing with city departments. With the Foundation money, the city will hire fellows to research citizens’ challenges and successes with city services.

Then there is The Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Corp., which will receive a sum of $175,478 to open a marketplace for immigrant cuisine at Mifflin Square Park. Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse has been awarded $50,000 to build a space “where diverse communities of aspiring comic creators can attend workshops and receive professional development.” And, lastly, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture has pledged to utilize its $180,000 grant to construct cultural exchange forums in public spaces through “photographic displays of youths’ expressions of identity,” according to the Knight Foundation.