In the creeping reign of Wisconsin over the rest of the world, we are willing to back off for at least this one concession: Milwaukee’s Will Allen, proprietor of Growing Power and recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Genius Grant.
Top-notch Chicago restaurants like Avec, Lula Cafe, and Nacional 27 (not to mention avant-eco-guardsmen like Uncommon Ground and the Green City Market) use Growing Power as a produce resource, and Growing Power in turn uses as resources (and vice versa) virtually everybody: teens, kids, the elderly, career farmers, urban planners all get involved with ideas for growing, harvesting, and distributing in communities across the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor. Their Chicago office has overseen such remarkable projects as the community garden in Cabrini-Green.
All in all, an excellent allocation of $500,000. By “menace,” here, of course, we mean “inspiration.”
Farmer, lighting designer: Geniuses [Chicago Tribune]
Growing Power [Official Site]
[Photo of Will Allen (center) and kids involved with Growing Power, via Growing Power’s site]
