Dear Sweat Records friends and family,

Last night it was announced that Sweat made it through over 1,000 applications and were awarded a 2012 Knight Arts Challenge grant! Our plan for this one is to revamp our in-store space, offer stipends to the bands that play, and professionally record everything so that acts have high-quality footage (instead of crappy cell phone clips) to promote themselves with.

Additionally, we’ll post the highlights at a soon-to-be-announced website that will show the world the great events and talented artists (local and otherwise) that come through our space.

We’re thrilled about this as we used our 2009 KAC grant to the max and did great things like launch SweatShopMiami.com, develop the Event-O-Matic WordPress plug-in (which has been downloaded over 8,500 times worldwide!), and throw three years of our free Sweatstock block party.

Remember: this is a matching grant which means that YOUR PURCHASES at Sweat help us earn our grant money, so we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for helping us match the first grant and for your continued support! We much prefer being able to sell people great new music as opposed to soliciting for donations!

Here’s the official description of our project, all of the winners’ projects can be found here.

Free Concerts Make Miami a Musical Destination

Project: Stipend for Touring Acts

Recipient: Sweat Records

Award: $140,000 (over two years)

To help make Miami a musical destination, Sweat Records will provide a stipend for touring acts to provide free or affordable concerts for an all-ages crowd. The project will increase the number of quality events it brings to the community and will host and pay more touring acts to visit. Sweat Records will also revamp its stage area with new sound equipment, a simple lighting rig and seating for more patrons. Concerts will be documented via audio, video and photography. Highlights will be posted online and performers will get high quality footage for promotional use.

Thanks so much again to Knight Foundation and to everyone who has supported Sweat over the years!