AWESOME FOUNDATION LONDON

The July award, after great deliberation at our meeting, was David Reeve, for the development of his documentary, The Lost Sound. As David himself puts it,

“While most music in the world enjoys a strong following many styles of Thai music are largely ignored by Thai people; especially traditional music or music that originates from outside the capital, Bangkok, where the middle class dictates what is and isn?t Thai culture. The Lost Sound, which also translates as ?Out of Tune?, will follow some of the custodians who lend their lives to the conservation and reinvention of such music; perhaps these musicians themselves could be considered as out of tune with contemporary Thai/Bangkok society.”

We’re very excited to fund this project, and we’re looking forward to seeing the end result at one of our prize-giving meetings in the near future.

Now, the competition was fierce this month, as every month, but don’t let that put you off. You can apply for the £1000 right now! Go to the submissions page, and make sure you select “London” as the chapter. Go! Now! Submit your awesomeness!

We’re very pleased to have awarded The Flying Seagulls an Awesome Grant to enable them to bring entertainment and hope to children in Romania through their traveling circus.

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.

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.

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!

“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 award: 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.