Release Date: July 30,2025
20 Knight Emerging City Champions Selected for 2025-2026 Fellowship Program to Help Build Vibrant, Resilient and Connected Communities Across the U.S.
July 30, 2025, Miami — Twenty community leaders from eight cities across the United States (Detroit, Akron, Philadelphia, Miami, Charlotte, San Jose, St. Paul, Macon) have been selected to participate in the 2025-2026 Knight Emerging City Champions fellowship program. Launched in 2015, Knight Emerging City Champions is a fellowship and micro-grant program for young civic innovators with bold ideas that strengthen trust and community connection, foster creative expression and build local resilience.
The program is powered by 8 80 Cities with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The fellowship is open to U.S. residents aged 18-35 with an innovative project idea and the drive to see it through in one of Knight Foundation's eight resident communities.
The 20 Champions will receive $5,000 in seed funding to implement one community project within a one-year period in their cities. Each winner will also receive a $500 tech bundle to support their project activities. The chosen projects respond to community needs, build on local assets and are brought to life through strong local collaboration.
"Emerging civic leaders have the creativity, urgency and commitment to reimagine how communities thrive,” said Francesca de Quesada Covey, Knight Foundation’s vice president of community impact. “Through the KECC program, Knight is investing in their leadership because we see their potential to lead change. By backing their ideas and elevating their work, we aim to spark solutions that take root locally and grow to strengthen civic life across communities.
The KECC program was created to resource emerging leaders with the funding and training necessary to turn their ideas into action. Now in its eighth cohort, the program has catalyzed more than 130 public space and civic engagement projects in communities across eight Knight cities. Projects have included everything from beehives and mentorship programs to mobility advocacy efforts. KECC supports fresh, community-led approaches to urban challenges—helping participants build on existing efforts or launch new ideas to improve their neighborhoods and shared spaces.
“We’re thrilled to announce the winners of another standout year for the Emerging City Champions Fellowship. This year’s cohort once again demonstrates the tremendous creativity, innovation, and capacity that already exists in the hearts and minds of young people in their communities. We are excited to help support these city champions bring their bold project ideas to life,” said Amanda O’Rourke, executive director of 8 80 Cities.
The 20 participants will meet in Toronto, Canada, from August 14 to 16 for the Knight Emerging City Champions Studio. The Studio is an immersive, three-day learning experience that includes city tours and meetings with grassroots community leaders. Champs will have the opportunity to build relationships with alumni and peers as well as work through their project ideas with support and coaching from 8 80 Cities and tech partner, Helpful Places.
For the rest of the fellowship year, there will be ongoing virtual learning labs and monthly meetups to support peer-to-peer learning and capacity building.
The 2025-2026 Knight Emerging City Champions will begin implementing their projects after returning home from Toronto. In one year, their cities will see new or enhanced neighborhood programs, community events, interactive public art, and vibrant public spaces that strengthen community connections and inspire long-term investment in civic systems.
More information is available at www.emergingcitychampions.org.
2025 Knight Emerging City Champions
AKRON, OH
Andrew Novak, The AK Run-Around
The AK Run-Around is a downtown Akron scavenger hunt series that invites residents to explore the city through interactive clues, local landmarks, and small business partnerships, turning the city into a shared playground—helping people see Akron (and each other) in a new, more connected way.
Dominique Waters, “SOLE” Box
“SOLE” Box is a hands-on, innovative learning experience that uses sneaker culture to spark curiosity, creativity, and connection in Akron's youth furthest from opportunity. Delivered in the form of a sleek sneaker box, it weaves together polymers, design, entrepreneurship, local history, and identity. "SOLE" Box will launch through youth-centered pop-up activations across downtown Akron. This project aims to strengthen community connections by uniting educators, artists, engineers, and families around youth empowerment. It will act as a bridge between culture and classroom, neighborhoods and opportunity, Akron’s past as the “Rubber Capital” and its future as a center of innovation.
CHARLOTTE
Raven Joiner, The Braille Trail
The Braille Trail is a groundbreaking public space initiative in Charlotte that transforms a park pathway into an inclusive, multi-sensory journey. Through tactile signage, QR-coded audio stories, and artistic installations co-created with artists with disabilities, this trail celebrates the lives and contributions of individuals with disabilities. The Braille Trail will host community events such as walk-and-learns, inclusive art workshops, and accessibility awareness days. It’s designed to welcome everyone, whether blind, sighted, disabled, or non-disabled, fostering mutual understanding.
Lorena James, Eco-Underdogs: Upcycling for Justice
Eco-Underdogs: Upcycling for Justice utilizes invasive species removal and creative reuse as tools for education, expression, and environmental healing. Through hands-on workshops and pop-up events, participants will remove invasive plants and transform them into handmade paper, native seed bombs, and natural fiber art. Each session includes ecology education, storytelling, and creative reflection. Activities will take place at public venues, including the Innovation Barn and the Charlotte Museum of History’s eight-acre site, which already hosts annual invasive species cleanups.
Marcus Locke, The Journeyman’s Development Guild
The Journeyman’s Development Guild is a sustainable community space built from a repurposed shipping container, designed to activate public spaces in Charlotte by providing hands-on workshops focused on practical trades and creative skills. The project aims to take ideas from concept to creation, equipping participants with tools and knowledge they can carry forward and pass down, reflecting tradition and community. This intentional use of reclaimed material reflects a broader vision for sustainability, adaptability, and equitable access to the arts.
DETROIT
Jerjuan Howard, Puritan Avenue Archive Project
The Puritan Archive Project aims to preserve, document, and celebrate the rich history, culture, and transformation of Detroit’s Puritan Avenue. Through oral histories, photographs, and storytelling, the project uplifts the voices of longtime residents, legacy businesses, and emerging leaders who have shaped the corridor. It will create a living record that honors the past while inspiring a collective vision for the future. By capturing the essence of Puritan Avenue, the project ensures that local stories are not erased but instead become a source of pride, learning, and community connection for generations to come.
Jeremiah Steen, Pages to Power
Pages to Power: Youth Block Club Movement transforms Pages Bookshop into a launchpad for economic mobility, where Detroit youth turn books into block-level leadership. Through this initiative, youth ages 10–24 will form neighborhood-based block clubs, receive training in financial literacy, storytelling, and community organizing, and lead local projects—from murals to micro-libraries.
Lauren Gillon, Mise En Place Community Kitchen
Mise En Place Community Kitchen is a project that aims to celebrate Detroit’s rich food culture and history. A solar-powered kitchen hub designed to bring cooking, community, and climate-conscious learning to public spaces. While also combating social determinants in the community such as energy and housing instability. Built with sustainability at its core, this kitchen hub serves as a platform for food education, pop-ups, and hands-on workshops. The space will be the future of garden-to-table community dinners, free family garden plots and youth programming. By harnessing solar energy and centering local ingredients, it reimagines what’s possible when food, equity, and environmental justice come together, one meal at a time.
MACON
Khaia Gibson, Veterans Village
Veterans Village is envisioned as a welcoming outdoor venue designed to support the mental and emotional well-being of veterans through nature-based healing and creative expression. The space will feature areas for therapeutic gardening, storytelling, outdoor grounding practices, and rotating art installations. By incorporating nature and art as coping mechanisms, Veteran Village offers veterans an opportunity to manage PTSD in peaceful, empowering ways. This environment is not only for veterans—it is a space that welcomes families, caregivers, active-duty military personnel, and members of the public who want to connect, learn, and support one another.
DeMarcus Beckham, The Still Point: Sensory Sanctuary for Neurodivergent Festivalgoers
The Still Point: Sensory Sanctuary for Neurodivergent Festivalgoers
aims to alleviate the limitations that individuals with sensory sensitivities face when participating in Macon's vibrant festivals by creating neurodivergent-friendly sanctuaries at select community gatherings. These thoughtfully designed spaces—set up in pop-up tents or nearby venues—creates inclusive festival experiences through dedicated quiet zones, sensory kits, clear visual signage, and online accessibility guides to ensure all attendees feel welcome and supported.
Moeiini Reilly, Listening to the Land: An Ocmulgee Hackathon
Listening to the Land: An Ocmulgee Hackathon is a community-centered hackathon in Macon, GA that brings together Indigenous stewards, local technologists, and community members to design and deploy environmental sensors for the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Inspired by relational frameworks like the Hawaiian Ahupuaʻa and Muscogee relationships to land and water, the hackathon activates Ocmulgee National Historic Park as a living lab for cultural memory, conservation, and climate justice. Participants will engage in walkshops—guided learning walks with elders and land stewards—before co-designing open-source sensors and dashboards that monitor soil moisture, air quality, water flow, and soundscapes.
MIAMI
Mirande De Gaspari, Mapping Miami
Mapping Miami is a participatory art project that aims to archive the city through the eyes of its inhabitants, creating space for storytelling, reflection, and collective memory. In a rapidly changing city like Miami, archives become vital tools for preserving memory, fostering connections, and promoting resilience. Whether through overdevelopment or climate change, even the most familiar places can shift dramatically in months or disappear entirely.
Lydia Ghuman, The South Florida Peoples’ Budget
The South Florida Peoples’ Budget aims to build a codified participatory budgeting process in Miami, Florida (codified meaning that this process will be created through policy). A codified participatory budgeting process allows Miami constituents to have direct control over a portion of Miami-Dade County’s budget and to annually determine what local needs their tax-payer dollars should fund. This project will be enacted through a diverse coalition of South Florida organizations and individuals and will center low-income residents in the participatory budgeting process. This participatory budgeting process will be created with the goal of replicating it in other South Florida counties.
Jacoub Reyes, The Evolving Edge
The Evolving Edge will feature a series of hands-on art workshops across Miami. Participants will engage in printmaking to explore the intricate patterns of mangrove roots and create ceramic forms inspired by their unique structures. These accessible activities will foster creative expression and provide a tangible way to connect with the local ecosystem. The collaborative creation of public art installations will be a central element. Combining individual prints and ceramic pieces, these mosaics will visually narrate the vital role of mangroves in coastal protection, fostering a sense of shared understanding and community pride.
PHILADELPHIA
Jessica Haddad, Bridging the Smile Gap
Bridging the Smile Gap focuses on creating a new paradigm for the underserved population of Philadelphia by providing accessible and up-to-date information about affordable dental care options in the area. The Institute of Clinical Bioethics at Saint Joseph’s University hosts five free healthcare clinics monthly and includes a dental station in each of these clinics. Every weekend, the team will target different communities where the underserved population might benefit from their services.
Kadafi El-Kardah, Drain Buddies!
Drain Buddies is a coalition of community members passionate about making a positive impact in their local area. It is more than just a cleanup effort; it's a movement rooted in community ownership, environmental stewardship, and local pride. Volunteers will “adopt” a neighborhood storm drain, taking responsibility for monitoring it for litter, debris, flooding, and pollution. The program will also include data reporting, youth engagement, and friendly competitions to bring residents together.
SAN JOSE
Fan Yang, Designing Dignity: Public Space for All
Designing Dignity aims to reclaim and redesign underutilized public spaces to serve as inclusive, welcoming hubs for community connection and resilience. Activities will include co-design workshops with unhoused individuals, local artists, youth, and residents to identify needs and collectively imagine more dignified, functional environments. Pop-up events such as art installations, free resource-sharing booths, story circles, and community meals will activate the space.
Jessica Gutierrez, For The Mamas
For the Mamas is a series of free community art workshops designed for mothers and their children in San Jose. The project offers inclusive, intergenerational spaces where moms can show up as they are and explore their creativity alongside their children. It fosters trust and resilience by centering the voices and needs of mothers, especially mothers of color, who are often excluded from creative programming.
ST. PAUL
Xiem Busch-Vuong, St. Paul Community Garden Connect
St. Paul Community Garden Connect aims to help community garden managers—especially those seeking successors—connect with local residents who may not know how to get involved. By bridging this communication gap, the project will foster trust, collaboration, and resource sharing among neighbourhoods.
Eleanor Hohulin, Cycling Our Capital City: Riding, Routing, and Relationships
Cycling Our Capital City: Riding, Routing, and Relationships
begins with Learn to Ride classes for adults, using a standard teaching curriculum. Next, there will be casual group rides focused on reflection and community building, allowing participants to connect with one another and their city. Finally, the team will develop an educational resource for individuals looking to bike more independently, new to commuting or biking to a nearby store, featuring popular local routes and helpful tips.
About 8 80 Cities
8 80 Cities is a nonprofit organization based in Toronto, Canada. Our mission is to ignite action and challenge the status quo to create healthier, more equitable and sustainable cities for all people. We are dedicated to contributing to the transformation of cities into places where people can walk, bike, access public transit, and visit vibrant parks and public places. Our approach is to engage people and communities across multiple sectors to inspire the creation of cities that are easily accessible, safe, and enjoyable for all. We achieve our mission through grant projects, research and advocacy, and our innovative services. For more, visit: 880cities.org.
About Knight Foundation
We are social investors who support a more effective democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once published newspapers. Learn more at kf.org.
MEDIA CONTACT:
KNIGHT FOUNDATION - JennyLee Molina, Director/Communications, Knight Foundation, molina@kf.org
8 80 CITIES - Amanda O’Rourke, Executive Director, 8 80 Cities, aorourke@880cities.org