What if you could give everyone the skills and confidence to tackle technical problems? Wouldn’t that be cool? In UW professor Beth Kolko’s experience, it’s not just cool – it’s awesome. Her Hackademia lab is a place where students from all backgrounds can come together and get their hands dirty, no experience necessary.

She’s been working with students at the University of Washington for the last 2 years, “building functional engineers one blinky LED at a time”. They’ve put together 3D printers, messed around (that’s the technical term) with Arduinos, and are embarking on an HTML5/javascript adventure. The result of all this is a group of students who are excited to change the world and credit Hackademia for their shift in perspective.

In addition to funding hardware for the Hackademia lab (which Beth has been personally supplying), our grant will also go towards a set of workshops aimed at reaching out to underengaged communities. The ideal end result? A chain reaction of enthusiasm, empowerment, and (of course) awesome projects!

The idea for this project came from a teen who was staying at a Crisis Residential Center (homeless shelter for teens) in Seattle. The center does great work by providing shelter and meeting basic needs for teens who are in a housing crisis. One of their programs provides Sex Education classes with volunteers & staff from Scarleteen (scarleteen.com). One of the teens in class commented that the education was great, but that it was really hard to keep all the appropriate materials for safe sex together when you’re in an unstable housing situation. This spawned the idea of a personal “safe sex kit” that would discreetly hold all the right items.

Scarleteen staff created a prototype to hold condoms, dental dams, lube, birth control, gloves, and cleansing cloths that could easily be sewn together by the teens themselves and other volunteers. The grant will be used to provide materials for the kits as well as for printing educational materials included in the kit. This kit would works hand in hand with the education Scarleteen already provides at the center as well as other locations the Seattle Area. Teens that receive the kit will also get a copy of the book “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College” written by Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna.  We’re super excited that by using the grant, they’ll be able to produce 50+ kits to distribute by the end of 2012, and scale from there.  We also just learned that Trojan donated several cases of condoms for these kits so our grant is already inspiring others to join in on this project!

If you’d like to know more about Scarleteen check out their web site at www.scarleteen.com or check out this cool video made by one of Scarleteen users. 

We got some great ink today in the newest edition of City Arts Magazine…

Easy Money

Awesome Foundation dean Nathaniel James talks about “low stakes” philanthropy and what $1,000 a month can do for art in Seattle.

Each month, the Awesome Foundation chooses an applicant who has proposed an awesome project, and we fund them. Our first grantee was an oral history project. More recently we helped fund the Onn/Of Light Festival. Since we operate on a monthly basis, we move quickly. Just a couple of weeks after we make a decision, the $1,000 cash is in the pocket of the grantee. Literally cash.

Read the whole piece here.

Once upon a time, Tracy Hartford and her friend Juha Kuikka were searching Downtown Seattle for an elusive spot of afternoon sun. The day was ripe for it – it was one of the hundred and sixty-four (or so) days a year in Seattle that are not completely overcast – but the looming shadows of skyscrapers made the search far harder than it should have been.  It is not known whether Tracy and Juha found their sun that day, but from their search was born an idea: why not create a mobile application which would combine information about the sun’s current location and the heights and shapes of buildings to help future seekers to find the nearest spot of elusive sun?

This idea lay dormant for many months, like a seed waiting for rain.  Fortunately rain is something we have plenty of in Seattle, and when Tracy saw the November call for proposals for our monthly grant, she submitted the application for Sunny Spot.

(Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that the Seattle Awesome Foundation is fixated on light.  Yes, last month we awarded our grant to the festival of lights Onn/Of, but that doesn’t mean we’re obsessed.  Why would we be obsessed?  Just because it’s cloudy or partly cloudy an average of 294 days a year here, just because as I write this it’s been 43 days since we’ve had a clear sky, doesn’t mean we’re obsessed.  Frankly the idea that we, as Seattleites, would spend all our time thinking about light – scarce, precious, glorious light – is a stereotype, and an offensive, unrealistic one at that.  We sometimes think about coffee, Thai food, and antidepressants too.)

Our initial reactions to the Sunny Spot application were mixed: some of us thought, “that would be awesome!” while others thought “that would be awesome… but is it possible?”  Tracy is a software engineer for Cray, a Seattle-based manufacturer of supercomputers, and has previous experience working on location-aware mobile applications.  After our intrepid team of technical experts discussed the idea with her at length, we decided the answer to the question of “can this actually work?” was a definitive “probably.”  But then, in Tracy’s own words, “awesome is sort of by definition outside of what is considered to be feasible.”

After reviewing over 50 applications (thanks everyone for submitting), our November trustee group is very pleased to introduce the world to our newest grantees, the multi-talented and awesome Sierra Stinson and Susan Robb (see more about the artists below)!

Seattle winters are dark, and this project wants to address that by turning on the light.  In late January, they plan to debut their project, Onn/Of, a festival of lights that will take place over 2-3 days, bringing local artists, and drawing  the public out of hibernation to celebrate all things light.   Thus far the project is scheduled to take place in Ballard, and we’ll have more info about the schedule and participating artists and as we get closer to the event.  We’re super excited!

Here’s their statement:

ONN / OF
Seattle’s first festival of lights
a curatorial collaboration between Sierra Stinson and Susan Robb

We hope to occupy a building with multiple light installations created by artists from Seattle, Vancouver and Portland. It would take place over 2-3 days at the end of January
with a series of events open to the public

About Sierra Stinson:

Sierra Stinson is the founder and curator of Vignettes, an alternative exhibition space in Seattle. The one night only exhibitions take place in her studio apartment on a biweekly basis and feature artists in many stages of their process and practice. She enjoys exploring the sense of urgency behind concept, creation and exhibition. The transition from the studio to gallery, as well as exploring and re-evaluating what it takes to live, work and create here and now.
Sierra has curated exhibitions at Joe Bar, Vermillion, Cornish College of the Arts as well as co-curating a mobile pop-up gallery ‘Show and Tell’ this August in NYC with Victoria Howe. Sierra attempts to enable art wherever she is at the moment as well as watch every episode of The Cosby Show and Roseanne.

About Susan Robb:

Susan Robb studied at Syracuse University before moving to the Pacific coast and receiving an MFA from University of Washington. Along with receiving a Pollock Krasner Grant, a Stranger Genius award, two Artist Trust Fellowships, and numerous public commissions, Susan owned a restaurant, played in a band, and was a bike messenger. Susan is also currently working on a film that could use your support.