I’ve been awarded my first grant! Delightfully, the crowdsourced contributors describe themselves as “funding cross-disciplinary ideas that don’t make sense“… says a LOT about what I’m doing here I think ;P Mainly they knew I had gone off to the Northern Hemisphere without enough money to get back to Australia… I’ll try to keep enough of this to go toward my return flight!
The visionary behind the scheme is Kristin Alford (@kristinalford), MD of Bridge8 a foresight, industry development and science communications consultancy in Adelaide. They were frustrated with the lack of support for risk-taking projects and so decided to do something about it. I’m very happy (and thankful) that they did!
XTK recipients (including me) are:
- Fee Plumley towards mapping global digital culture ($1200)
- Chloe Langford (Format) for random gifts that reinforce no logic during the Festival of Unpopular Culture in Adelaide ($300)
- Dr Will Grant to participate fly to Adelaide for the XTK panel on Thursday 13th October at 5pm and contribute expertise on why these types of ideas are hard to find. Will proposed a couple of ideas that he can’t reasonably do, there seemed like there was as much to learn from this as for funded projects ($450)
- Simon Divecha and Joe Flynn about their idea on community scale protection and enhancement of the “commons”, but that’s a project that currently needs time more than funds. They will keep us up to date with progress and future needs.
You can hear us talk about our nonsensical ideas at the next XTK event, a panel during the Festival of Unpopular Culture in Adelaide at 5pm on Thursday 13th October. Join us online – I’ll be skyyping in from New York!
(BTW, they still have $1550 in funds remaining & have opened a second round of voluntary fundraising. They’re hoping to support something in science and/or technology – get in there!)