Reminder: This month's Thousand Dollar Thursday is SUPER SPECIAL!

Just a quick reminder that our Thousand Dollar Thursday for September is taking place on a SUPER SPECIAL Saturday (i.e. NOT tomorrow!) as a part of Alberta Culture Days, We Should Know Each Other #100, Doors Open at King Edward (itself a part of Doors Open YYC Naked), and a whole whackload of other things!

• What:  SUPER SPECIAL Saturday September 2012 Awesome Calgary Thousand Dollar Thursday
• Where:  King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator (1720 - 30th Avenue SW)
• When:  Saturday, September 29 (Note the date change!) at 6 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook and Yelp

Also, a quick programming note:  September 2012 AF-Calgary Top4 Finalist Joe Vipond with his "Hillhurst-Sunnyside Harvest Fair" submission has decided to bow out.  Why?  In his own words:

Last year we pulled off the Fair with a $150 budget.  Not great, but it got us through.  This year, however, we applied to you, and to gigYYC for a grant.  As fate would have it, gigYYC honoured us with a $1200 grant in the last month competition... we will put it to good use.

Because they're already getting $1,200 from Calgary 2012's super-awesome Grassroots Inspired Grants program (you should definitely check it out; only a few months to go!), Joe has chosen to step aside and allow someone else a chance to win AF-Calgary's no-strings-attached $1,000 prize in his place.

As we only had two Honourable Mentions this month, we flipped a coin and "Start-up of a Community Food Security Strategy" by Quentin Sinclair won the toss up.

So, the four people who'll be pitching their Awesome Ideas this Saturday are:

1. PODPLAYS by Natalie Meisner:  "Downloadable Art for Your Ears."  
2. HomeSewn by Nick Meehan:  "One for one, locally knit mittens for Calgary's homeless population."
3. 52 Weaks Strong by Jason Hagen:  "The project is building a marriage. Its a marriage journal. Every week you ask your wife one question (52 weeks in a year means 52 questions). The husband then has one week to create an experience based on her response. On one side of the journal is the question and response. On the other side is the area where the wife gets to document the experience that was created."
4. Start-up of a Community Food Security Strategy by Quentin Sinclair:  "Lead community events and workshops centred around a new monthly winter farmer's market."

Big thanks to Joe Vipond for his noble gesture and good luck to everyone pitching this Saturday!

In the meantime, we're still accepting submissions for our October 2012 prize.  If you have an Awesome Idea that you'd like to submit for consideration, the deadline for that is Wednesday, October 10 at 11:59 p.m.  To submit an idea, simply fill out this handy-dandy web form!

Hope to see you out this Saturday and make sure to sample the wealth of events happening this weekend as part of Alberta Culture Days!!

Something Awesome: Laughs, Laughs and more Laughs!

You may think this is funny, but when it comes to comedy, Calgary is no laughing matter…

…okay, that was was lame.  But you can't blame a guy for trying!

Actually, Calgary has a lot to be proud of when it comes to the world of comedy.  Many famous comedians and improvisationalists have cut their teeth here in Calgary and were able to propel themselves into successful careers!

Some examples:

• Mark McKinney and Bruce McCulloch from Kids in the Hall fame both started their comedy careers with Calgary's famous Loose Moose Theatre Company.
• Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring were both born in Alberta (Pat from Calgary and Peter from Drayton Valley) and went on to work at YTV in Toronto as television hosts, as well as with The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto. They currently host This is That on CBC Radio.
• Rebecca Northan was raised in Calgary, is a graduate of the University of Calgary and an alumna of Loose Moose Theatre and has gone on to guest on CBC's Being Erica and guest host This Hour Has 22 Minutes, among starring and touring in many other improve and off-Broadway shows.

Calgary has a lot to be proud of when it comes to contributions to the comedy industry, but the unfortunate thing is that most people here outside of that industry might not even know it.

The brand-new YYComedy Festival, running September 24-30 in various venues around the city, aims to change that and it's part of the reason why the YYComedy Festival was chosen to be a Top4 Finalist here at AF-Calgary in August 2012.

Conceived by Cory Mack, Harry Doupe and James Sutherland, the inaugural YYComedy Festival, coinciding with the 35th anniversary of Loose Moose Theatre and the 25th anniversary of Yuk Yuk's, hopes to showcase Calgary's best locally grown talent and those with a Calgary connection in the comedic field, paying tribute to the past, present and future of Calgary comedy.

And that's definitely Something Awesome.

Tickets as well as more information for the festival including a list of performers and show schedules are available at yycomedy.ca.  For more information on the festival itself, check out these excellent articles by FFWD Weekly and the Calgary Herald.

Announcing September 2012's AF-Calgary Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions

Pre-season professional hockey may be out of the cards for the moment, but there'll be no stoppage on the awesomeness on this end as we're ready to announce our September 2012 Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions!

So without any further ado, here they are, in no particular order:

Top4 Finalists

1. PODPLAYS by Natalie Meisner:  "Downloadable Art for Your Ears."  
2. HomeSewn by Nick Meehan:  "One for one, locally knit mittens for Calgary's homeless population."
3. Hillhurst-Sunnyside Harvest Fair by Joe Vipond:  "Annual celebration of urban agriculture."
4. 52 Weaks Strong by Jason Hagen:  "The project is building a marriage. Its a marriage journal. Every week you ask your wife one question (52 weeks in a year means 52 questions). The husband then has one week to create an experience based on her response. On one side of the journal is the question and response. On the other side is the area where the wife gets to document the experience that was created."

Honourable Mentions

• Start-up of a Community Food Security Strategy by Quentin Sinclair:  "Lead community events and workshops centred around a new monthly winter farmer's market."
• Westwinds Music Society by John Evans:  "We are non-profit and celebrating our 25th Anniversary this year, we want to celebrate this milestone!"

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A reminder that this month's Awesome Calgary Thousand Dollar Thursday is a SUPER SPECIAL Saturday September edition, taking place at the King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator on Saturday, September 29 as a part of Alberta Culture Days and Doors Open at King Edward, and in conjunction with We Should Know Each Other #100 and a whack load of other events all happening at the King Edward that weekend.

• What:  SUPER SPECIAL Saturday September 2012 Awesome Calgary Thousand Dollar Thursday
• Where:  King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator (1720 - 30th Avenue SW)
• When:  Saturday, September 29 (Note the date change!) at 6 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook and Yelp

Again, please note the date change:  This month's Thousand Dollar Thursday event will be held on a Saturday due to the special festivities.  Sure, it's not exactly on a Thursday this month, but it's the thought that counts, right? ;-)

Hope to see you there!

And in the meantime, we're now accepting submissions for our October 2012 prize.  If you have an Awesome Idea that you'd like to submit for consideration, the deadline for that is Wednesday, October 10 at 11:59 p.m.  To submit an idea, simply fill out this handy-dandy web form! 

CLOUD debuts to tremendous success!

Last Saturday, AF-Calgary's August 2012 winners Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett's CLOUD made its appearance at Calgary's first-ever Nuit Blanche festival.

Throughout the eight-hours of the festival, which ran from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., Calgarians from all over were pulling on the rain shower of metal cords turning lights on and off creating a simulation of an electrical cloud.

Popular with the crowd, even a brief period of rain didn't detract from the interest of festival-goers as they went right back to it once the rain stopped.

Here's a taste of what happened that night, courtesy of Twitter:

Congratulations, Caitlind and Wayne on pulling off such an AWESOME project!  To learn more about the CLOUD project, check out their website.

Announcing our SUPER SPECIAL September Thousand Dollar Thursday venue!

Over the last year and a half, we've tried to stay consistent here at AF-Calgary when it comes to our calendar.

For example, our monthly deadline for submissions is always the 10th of every month at 11:59 p.m., our Trustees meet every third Thursday to create our monthly Top4 Finalist and Honourable Mention short lists, and we usually hold our Thousand Dollar Thursday events on the fourth Thursday of the month (not to be confused with the last Thursday of the month, as some months have five Thursdays) at an Awesome Venue around town.

For the most part, we've been pretty disciplined about sticking with it, but ever since our chapter's conception, we've always toyed with the idea of either holding special events outside of our usual schedule, or being open to the possibility of moving our main event if a special opportunity arises.

Well, September 2012 may be the first time that we break with tradition.

This month, a super-cool space is opening at the old King Edward School in SW Calgary.  In 2001, the King Edward School officially shut down and while portions of the space were leased for use as a private, French-language institution as well as a film production location between 2001 and 2004, the building has been essentially vacant since 2005.

In 2010, through a partnership between The Calgary Foundation and Calgary Arts Development, the King Edward School was purchased to turn it into a mixed-use hub and art incubator that would provide for a space for collaborative gathering and advancement of professional arts practice, social innovation and community development in South Calgary.

The brand new King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator is holding an open house during the last weekend of September as a part of Alberta Culture Days, and Awesome Foundation - Calgary will be there holding a special edition of Awesome Calgary's Thousand Dollar Thursday.

Rather than holding our event on the fourth Thursday of this month, instead, we'll be holding the event on Saturday, September 29 at 6 p.m. at the King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator during Doors Open at King Edward and in conjunction with many other events such as Doors Open YYC Naked, We Should Know Each Other #100, PechaKucha Night #13:  Seed and much more!

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• What:  SUPER SPECIAL September 2012 Awesome Calgary Thousand Dollar Thursday
• Where:  King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator (1720 - 30th Avenue SW)
• When:  Saturday, September 29 (Note the date change!) at 6 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook and Yelp

There's a lot happening at that space over those three days, and AF-Calgary is proud to be a part of the festivities.

So note the date change for this month's Thousand Dollar Thursday (the last Saturday of the month rather than the fourth Thursday) and we hope to see you there!  And make sure to check out the other cool things happening at the King Edward Arts Hub and Incubator over the weekend as well.