Please note a CORRECTION: The 2nd Awesome grant for August, donated by the good folks at Tribal Affairs, will be for $500, not $1000 as originally stated. A Call to AWESOME: The Awesome Foundation DC partners with Tribal Affairs for a 2nd youth arts grant in August. The Awesome Foundation DC and Tribal Affairs are pleased to announce an exciting collaboration for a special $500 youth arts grant in August. This will be in addition to the regular monthly $1000 Awesome Grant. Submit your ideas to the DC Chapter here: http://awesomefoundation.org/submissions/new We are looking for the most courageous and ambitious and most talented student and youth artists from DC and surounds.This months special youth grant has been made possible through an event named Tribal Affairs, that was created by three students from Washington D.C. These three students Alfredo Weeks, Lara Al- Soudani and Matilda Nwoke felt the need to organize an event focused on promoting student work. The Tribal Affairs event united student from culinary arts, visual arts and fashion design into one show to promote themselves. In addition to creating and hosting a spectacular event, Alfredo, Lara, and Matilda decided that they wanted to donate all ticket proceeds to the Awesome foundation in order to… read more →

This is Suzanne Tidwell and that fuzzy, rainbowed thing beside her is a tree. Suzanne is a self-proclaimed yarn bomber — think Stich’n Bitch + graffiti. Today, I watched Suzanne and her friends transform 7 or 8 of the Occidental Park maple trees into a fanciful, Christo-meets-Seuss installation (more pics below). I had a chance to chat with Suzanne during Arts Walk. She’s been scouring every Value Village in greater Seattle for discount yarn. She won a grant from 4Culture. And then came the paperwork and the permissions. In other words, a lot of love and hard work. The result? Complete surprise and delight from all passers-by. People petting trees. A reason to stop for a snapshot with a friend. Awesome. Suzanne was happy to hear that we are launching an Awesome Foundation in Seattle. She told me that winning traditional arts project grants can be tricky. “Foundations won’t often fund your project until it’s nearly completed,” making the start-up process challenging, especially for new artists like herself. A little recognition and a $1,000 grant for supplies could be a very meaningful first step for a new project. Coming home inspired by Suzanne and her yarn bomb, I wanted to… read more →

Awesome Food, a chapter of the worldwide Awesome Foundation, officially launched on Wednesday, July 20 and is now accepting grant applications from around the world to further food awesomeness in the universe. Visit awesomefood.net to learn more and apply at awesomefood.net/apply. The first round for application deadline is end-of-day, Friday, August 5th.

It’s with great pleasure that we here at AF Sydney can announce that we’re looking to fill two positions on our board with super awesome people such as yourself!!! What are the positions, you ask? 1. The 2nd Alan Rogers Chair for Higher Awesome Studies Alan has recently decided to move himself down to the wonderful city of Melbourne. Whilst Sydney’s loss is Melbourne’s gain, it also means we get to recruit a new member to the Awesome Foundation Sydney board! Taking Alan’s chair means attending our monthly dinners and pitching in $100 towards the $1000 grants we award. 2. Dean of Awesome We’ve muddled through the process of setting up our little chapter of awesomeness here in Sydney, but now we’re looking to recruit someone to help us organise and manage the chapter each month. This role includes small but crucial tasks; such as organising the monthly dinners, posting occasionally to the AF Blog you are reading now and generally being the ‘go-to’ person for our board members. You’ll be a fully fledged member of AF Sydney, with full voting rights and an equal say in who each months grant recipient will be. You don’t have to pay the monthly $100,… read more →

We’ve had an Awesome Foundation here in Sydney for a few months now and over that time, we’ve seen approximately 50 applications for our monthly grant. We get quite a few questions from friends and colleagues about how the Awesome Foundation works, namely: 1) “What happens if you’re funding terrorism?” 2) “What exactly makes something awesome?” The answer to question 1 is that we have an application process where we use common logic, and sometimes checking out the project in question, to ensure we don’t fund terrorism. But at the end of the day, it’s a no strings attached grant to do something awesome, and terrorism isn’t really that awesome. The second question is a bit harder to answer. We all know ‘awesome’ when we see it right? But how exactly do you go about encouraging people to apply for our awesome grant if they’re unaware they might be eligible!?! 9 awesome indicators Rich Cooper, from AF Toronto, has put together a phenomenal list that we think helps define what is awesome. If you’ve got a little side project on the go and you think it’s totally awesome, you should apply here. 1. Newness – Is this idea totally new?… read more →