It was a humid summer night in DC when we were seduced by One Night Stand – the winner of the July grant from Awesome Foundation DC. One Night Stand seeks out vacant lots in the greater Washington DC area and turns them into contemporary art venues for one night. The project team revitalizes the vacant lot, cleans, removes debris and prepares the space for an exhibition that lasts 2-3 hours. Photo with thanks to @PinklineProject The aim of the project is to provide spot exhibitions and involve the community in the transformation of their neighborhood. The project is the brainchild of Randal Scott, and we talked to him about his inspiration for the project: What is One Night Stand all about, what do you do, where is it, who is it for, and when is the next one? In a soundbite…ONS puts contemporary arts exhibitions in vacant lots, unused space or wherever, for one night. ONS was kinda put together on the fly. Traveling back and forth from NY I have lots of time to think and it just came to me (after a long process of looking at way overpriced commercial space in DC) to just throw an exhibition together in a vacant lot. I… read more →
Hot on the heels of awarding our first Chicago grant, WBEZ (our local Chicago NPR station) produced a piece about us for Changing Gears. We also successfully grew our trustee squad to 20, and just closed our call for August proposals. We’re planning on announcing our next two grants within a week or so. Awesome times in the Chi! Be sure to keep up with us on Tumblr and @chicagoawesome.
The summer has been mighty busy in Awesometonia. In Boston alone, we: >> Had our TED stage debut with Christina Xu’s “The Importance of Being Awesome” at TEDxBoston. >> Held our first (of hopefully many) Nerdy/Awesome collaborations co-hosting Nerd Nite Boston on Monday, July 25th. >> Set our next submission deadline for the August @awesomebos grant. Apply by Sunday, August 7th. As if that weren’t enough, there have been some changes in the micro-trustee line-up. The 2nd Evan Burchard Chair of Higher Awesome Studies Founding Micro-trustee, Evan Burchard began his relocation to San Francisco in grand fashion with a fully-funded Kickstarter project to WALK across the country and chart a walking trail that will be made available online to fellow pedestrian adventurers. Before heading out, Evan left his chair in good hands with Jacob Barss-Bailey. Jacob’s day job is software design at Nokia. On the side, he’s known for his love of animated gifs and quasi-legal urban planting projects. Now that he’s a micro-trustee, he’ll be using his green thumb to grow some serious Awesome for Boston to enjoy. The 2nd Mac Cowell Chair of Higher Awesome Studies Provided his flight isn’t severely delayed, founding Micro-trustee Mac Cowell will be in… read more →
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 →