The Knight Foundation has $1 million for tech-driven culture projects

The Barnes Foundation on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.
Thom Carroll/for PhillyVoice

The Knight Foundation’s latest call for applications targets arts and culture organizations interested in using tech to boost the creative fields.

While the foundation has recently provided grants to aid the Philadelphia housing crisis or aid other local civic projects, the Prototype Fund designates $1 million for groups who want to answer the question, “How might cultural institutions use technology to connect people to the arts?”

“Sometimes it is hard to find the poetry in technology,” the call for applications reads.

“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.”

The application is open to anyone, including individuals not associated with an organization. The Knight Foundation urges applicants to consider how technology can be used to promote art, explore the new mediums technology can offer the art world, and consider how to “breath warmth” into tech through arts and culture.

Patrick Morgan, program director for the foundation’s Philadelphia chapter, told Technically more about the guiding questions for applicants.

“The first is: how can projects help build an art organization’s expanded use of tech? How can we use tech to create unique, deep experiences? How can that be replicated in and around the arts?”

Learn more about the grants here.