***Europe – The Awesome Foundation

Archive for ***Europe

Awesome Foundation Zurich

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Gruezi* World! Awesome Foundation Zurich has just gone live.

Today, we are proud to announce the launch of the Awesome chapter Zurich – only the second one on the European continent (the UK doesn’t count, right?). We have no other motivation than the fact that we see a lot of undiscovered awesomeness in Switzerland. Things are truly bubbling here and it is about time some of the things that are going down in the land of chocolate and cheese get noticed, acknowledged, hellyeah’d and awesomeized. That’s what we are here for.

We are ten people from all walks of life aiming to come together four times a year to award 1000 CHF to awesome project ideas, that they may see the light of day. We are accepting first application as of now (we try to communicate in German, but English is no problem either).

*Gruezi is how we say “Hello” around here.

Posted by Moritz Adler at 3:32 am Comments

The Peoples Kitchen

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Sunday community cook-ups

After a great night on Wednesday in the Barley Mow on Curtain rd where 5 awesome projects presented, we’re thrilled to give January’s Awesome London award to The People’s Kitchen.

Steve and the rest of the PK gang aim to draw attention to the tonnes of perfectly good food that is thrown away every day from supermarkets, restaurants and homes. They collect great food that is past its sell by date from local shops, and every sunday in their kitchen in Passing Clouds in Dalston, the first 20 people that turn up (they’re always oversubscribed) cook a big meal together for the first 50 – 100 people that turn up to eat. Again, it’s so popular they’re always oversubscribed. They believe that cooking and eating together is a great way to build community, and we LOVE that idea. They’ll use the award to buy some bigger and more robust kitchen equipment so that they can expand the variety of the dishes they can cook. Yum Yum!

The People’s Kitchen gang are also developing it as a fantastic event that can be replicated and scaled, because of course like the Awesome Foundation, this could work in any community. They’ve had some great media interest already which is not surprising considering the huge potential of this. If you feel like starting a People’s Kitchen in your neighbourhood, get in touch with Steve at their Facebook page here.

Posted by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh at 12:01 pm Comments

First Awesome Foundation Berlin Grant for a Wild Ride

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Today, the Berlin chapter of the Awesome Foundation was proud to announce the first grand winner. Many applicants were present this morning at Betahaus when we had the honor to hand over a brown paper bag filled with 1000 EUR to Konrad who convinced with his awesome idea: a “Wilde Schlittenfahrt”, a wild downhill sledge ride.

Konrad (seen above with a hat and one hand on the money bag) will build a sleigh track with different lanes to enjoy winter and the snow. It will be maintained, so it lasts a while. He already has some locations in mind and is eager to realize his snowride soon. In this video, Konrad explains his idea with his own words:

Wilde Schlittenfahrt aka Wild sled ride – Awesome Foundation Berlin grantee Konrad explains his idea from Henrik Moltke on Vimeo.

We liked the idea because it spreads love and fun during a very hard, dark and cold time in Berlin: winter. It will bring people together and create a friendly environment. It is realizable soon and within the budget. Plus: We all look forward to riding that hill ourselves, awesome!

Thanks to everybody who submitted their ideas, we were amazed by the variety and number (more than 40) applications! It was really hard to decide, great fun took us a whole Friday night and we look forward to the next pack of applications, If you think you’ve got an Awesome idea then get your submissions in now!

Photo and video by Henrik Moltke (CC by), blog post by Thomas Praus

Posted by Peter Bihr at 11:57 am Comments

Prints for Monsters

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Monsters general supplies, and now prints too! (oh yes and some creative writing workshops)

We’re thrilled to give our November award to Lucy and Ben from the Ministry of Stories for their Monster Shop in Hoxton. Inspired by the pirate store at 826 Valencia in San Francisco, as well as offering the best in monster supplies, the store also does a line in creative writing workshops for children, and has lots of volunteers and authors contributing their time and energy to the project.

Lucy and Ben applied for an AF award to print a run of very awesome screen prints of monsters done by some very fine illustrators in collaboration with local children who described their monsters to the illustrators.

While the Ministry of stories have been able to secure funding for the educational side of their initiative, before the opening they found it difficult to find funding for the products they wanted to develop for the shop in order to make it self-sustaining from revenues from the shop. We were delighted to be able to contribute to this very awesome project!

Posted by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh at 11:13 am Comments

AF London’s May Fellowship: ‘The Big Dipper Project’

Monday, June 14th, 2010

“Oh my god, it’s full of stars”

The Trustees of the Awesome Foundation’s London Chapter are delighted to announce the winner of their inaugural fellowship: Oscar Lhermite’s ‘Big Dipper Project‘.

As our cities become increasingly populated, the man-made mix of pollution and light have all but banished the stars from our skies, eroding our magical relationship with these distant balls of white-hot plasma.

‘The Big Dipper Project’ is an attempt to recreate the constellations in the night sky over major cities using a combination of black helium balloons and white LEDs. Oscar, a French product designer and artist currently studying at the Royal College of Art in London, has been perfecting his technique by tethering his stars in a variety of configurations across the city. He aims to use the money to turbo-charge his efforts, bringing in bigger balloons, arduinos and advanced software to ensure precise star locations and minimal drift. This will culminate in a recreation of The Big Dipper somewhere over London later this Summer.

(Photo by Cormac McGloin)

The London Trustees were impressed with Oscar’s passion and enthusiasm for his ideas, and chose him for the May Fellowship because of this project’s general awesomeness, its connection with our city, and the delight it will bring to all that are lucky enough to see it. Check out Oscar’s presentation on SlideShare.

(Oscar with his £1,000 cheque)

Submissions for June’s grant are open now, the deadline is June 30th.

Posted by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh at 6:01 am Comments