Tim Hwang reporting in here for Awesome Foundation San Francisco! We’re thrilled to announce that this months winner of the Awesome Fellowship is Wendy MacNaughton, a brilliant artist and illustrator living here in the Bay Area. She’s been working recently on a series called “Meanwhile” — narrative comics exploring the thicket of awesome microcommunities nestled within San Francisco. Previous comics have explored the Market Street Chess Players, The Dolphin Club Bay Swimmers, Dog Walkers, Farmer’s Market Farmers and Mission Bartenders. They’re all tremendously fun to read, and are worth checking out here. For this month, she’s worked out a partnership with the San Francisco Public Library, and will be spending a month interviewing and drawing the folks who work there, and exploring the people who use the libraries as a community hub. Best of all (and we’re still working out the details) but the SFPL has agreed to either show the outcome of the project in their readers cafe at Fort Mason, or (better yet) help make little books of it that can be on display and for sale at libraries, the cafe and bookstores in SF (with proceeds going to the library!) You can see more of Wendy’s work… read more →

There’s a reason why we are only now, in the middle of April, announcing the Boston January ’11 Awesome Fellows: it’s because they’re super mysterious. The Banditos Misteriosos are a troupe of Bostonians who consider themselves Boston’s mysterious playmate. Since 2007, they’ve been organizing public ruckuses and shenanigans that try to provide answers to the two big questions they’re always asking: “Who are these people we pass in the street?” and “How could we use those big open public spaces?” The Awesome Foundation is very excited to fund one of their future capers, which should be seeing the light of day in the summer. And although we know all the juicy behind-the-scenes plans, our lips are zipped for now when it comes to details: the mystery must linger! Instead, we’ll let them tell you about the basic idea: You see, we’re going to make a puzzle.  And some time in the summer, you’ll get to put it together! Oh… P.S. It’s gonna be GIANT! Want more details beyond that? Patience! Patience! You’ll find out more soon enough!  For now, we just need you to get excited, start boning up on your puzzling skills, and be sure you’ll be privy to… read more →

Hi. CHicago is launching today. Could use advice: how you do best let people in your city know you exist? I’m sending out a press release–but if any of you have friends in Chicago, please ask them to tell people about us, and send friends to our new Facebook page. Thanks!

We are happy to announce LA’s APRIL grant winner – LA Compton Junior Posse. In 1988 Mayisha Akbar created, somewhat by accident, a safe haven for kids in Compton. Little known fact to most, the Richland Farms area of Compton is zoned for farming. Many people have ranches and raise horses in a part of Los Angeles that is widely perceived as unsafe. A mother of three, Mayisha moved to Compton to buy a farm where she could raise horses. What she quickly realized was that in Compton, many children’s basic needs are not being met. Her own children slowly brought more and more neighborhood kids back to the farm after school to play, for meals, and so on. Mayisha found that horses acted as a motivational tool for the children, and slowly but surely has formed a strong organization teaching kids to ride. Through Mayisha’s backyard program, hundreds of young people ages 5-18 have learned to take care for and communicate with horses, many even compete! Mayisha provides kids with a sense of self-worth and belonging and a real life skill. We think the Compton Junior Posse is awesome! If you want to donate or check out the posse,… read more →

We just awarded our March Grant to the super talented Experience Counterpoint. Now, if you’re in DC this week, you will have the opportunity to Experience Counterpoint for yourself at our launch party this Wednesday 23rd March. From 6:30 pm at One Lounge: 1606 20th Street NW • Washington, DC20009. More details and tickets here: http://dcawesome.eventbrite.com/. Counterpoint will be joined by a host of other Awesome people and projects in the “Awesome Showcase”, where you will have a chance to get to know them, learn about their projects, and donate “Tokens of Awesome” (which we will convert into cold hard “cee ay dollar sign ache” at the end of the night) to help further their awesome projects! The showcase will represent the wide range of projects we hear from and will include such awesomeness as: A life-size fabric sculpture of I Dream of Jeanne’s bottle Painting with Light Hybrid Robot Instruments A new type of drip filtration system A Found Art and Photogrpahy Exhibition Scrap Action And of course our previous Awesome Grantees – FabLab, Ward 8 Farmers Market, and the Petworth Jazz Festival. The party is open to everyone awesome, but priority will be given to ticket holders, so… read more →