It’s with great pleasure that we can announce that the first recipient of the Awesome Foundation Sydney grant is the team from Big Fag Press, who submitted an awesome application to us in March. The guys at BFP have at their disposal a huge printing press, which they are going to use to create a unique map of the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo. Here is an extract from their application, to give you some idea of what it’s all about.

Woolloomooloo is awesome. It contains some of the wealthiest bankers, swankiest restaurants, and pristine apartments in Sydney; it also contains a huge population of homeless folks, plenty of public housing, and loads of social services and cultural institutions. Its current urban form was made possible through union Green Bans in the 1970s. For the first time ever, our map will put all this conflicted data on a two dimensional inky collision course.

To create the map, the team will print up a ‘first version’ of the suburb map and then walk around the area. They will mark on the map, by hand, anything ‘weird and wonderful and important that we happen to bump into.’ They will then take this information and place it onto a printing plate to produce a wonderfully insightful map of Woolloomooloo. They will then hand the edition out, as well as sell it in different places to help cover costs that the $1000 may not quite make up. They will also exhibit it at the First Draft Depot gallery space.

We’re super-excited by this awesome project will bring about, and can’t wait to see how the final version turns out!

Finally, we received a whopping 29 submissions for the March grant. Submissions are now open for April, so if you have an awesome idea – no matter how zany and crazy, then apply here: http://awesomefoundation.org/submissions/new