There was a whole lot of Awesome in the submissions bag for the Boston chapter’s September 2011 Fellowship. One in particular stood out. Internationally known mural artist, Caleb Neelon, applied for spray paint and sandwich money to underwrite the transformation of a large wall for the Tobin School in Mission Hill. For those who love art and our fair city, Neelon’s TEDx Boston presentation (‘Courting the Creative Class’) is a must watch. Want to know more? Here’s a blurb from the application: I’ll have some artists coming in from out of town and it’ll be a great time. Right now I don’t have any idea what we’ll be painting, but that’s the way I like it, and the school principal is fine with that. I know it’ll be really colorful. The wall is boring crummy brick and needs some love. This will be the 2nd project Neelon has done for the elementary school. Weather permitting, painting will begin this weekend as a lead in to his upcoming talk at the MFA (Sunday, September 25th @ 2pm) and recently released book, The History of American Graffiti. Follow the link to Amazon. The reviews are pretty freakin’ awesome.

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 →

Urban renewal is a hot topic and the Awesome Foundation is big into supporting into creative minded people who focus on harnessing a community’s energy to complement larger scale bricks and mortar development.  The Boston Chapter awarded it’s February grant to artist and basketball enthusiast Maria Molteni in support of her mission to restore use of local abandoned b-ball courts by crafting DIY nets. This project harnesses the power of shared activity and public space in fostering a bond of trust between artists, athletes, and neighbors. The nets are designed to be colorful, vibrant additions to public spaces that go beyond being strictly functional. Installing unique hand-crafted products sets the stage for individual expression. The MOLTENi NET WORKS project is well underway with a recent exhibit at Cambridge’s MEME Gallery in Central Square that also included workshops where participants were able to hand-crochet basketball nets to be installed on bare hoops. Efforts have begun locally in Allston, MA and there are several local organizations (Boston include Artists for Humanity, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, Design Studio for Social Intervention, and Massart’s Fibers Department) interested in putting on more workshops. If you’d like to get pitch in, there are a… 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 →

There’s some new* blood in the Boston Chapter of The Awesome Foundation. Christina Xu 2nd Tim Hwang** Chair for Higher Awesome Studies (July 2010) In addition to being the Multitasker at Breadpig, Christina is the co-founder of ROFLCon, one of the proprietors of a coworking space in Cambridge called p.irateship, and a DJ for a weekly radio show called Global Frequency. She tweets about all of these things and more here. Doc Searls 3rd Matt Blake** Chair for Higher Awesome Studies (September 2010) Doc is Senior Editor of Linux Journal, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, an alumnus fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a fellow with the Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the world’s most quoted bloggers, and a photographer committed to enlarging the sum of images in the public domain. Chris Marstall 2nd Emily Daniels** Chair for Higher Awesome Studies (October 2010) Chris is a programmer and creator of the concert alert service tourfilter.com. He’s the Creative Technologist at The Boston Globe charged with establishing their Media Lab, and a fixture on the local music technology scene to boot. Word on the… read more →