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Wrapping Up Creative Welly | A Study In Human Intimacy

The final episode of this three year journey in creating something beautiful (in podcast form).

Last week I posted episodes 49 and 50 of the unique podcast I conceived and produced, Creative Welly, where we have courageous conversations with bold humans, and today the final ‘bonus’ episode went live—watch above for the back story and insights into the whole adventure.

So why end?

Simply put, it achieved its goals plus as discussed in the episode above, I (probably) won’t be around much longer.

The first episode went live in June 2020 and after 50 episodes, 100 humans, over 80 hours worth of conversation shared, it’s time to wrap it all up in a neat bow and stand back as a gift to the community of participants, partners and watchers / listeners alike.

This was a selfish project in some ways (which I talk about above) although with a high intention of creating space for humanity to flourish (through conversation) and in doing so offer a way to deeply connect back into something ritualistic and primal.

You see, Creative Welly is a fireside.

A democratic gathering of humans through a bond of openness, curiosity and design.

Everything about it was crafted with this in mind: the circular table aiding the balance of the storytelling space for those who sat at it; the key-light which lit all participants equally and wonderfully; the black and white aesthetic to continue the attempt of harmony; moving the cameras far back into the shadows so they don’t get in the way; the visual split of everyone being on screen in the final edit which serves a further purpose to amplify intimacy in the viewers (as every nuance of non-verbal gestural cues was on display not like other podcasts or video content).

Metrics of success

As discussed, in many episodes and the one above, I never once looked at the stats relating to the project.

Having 100 of my network to say yes and share this experience with them, was reward enough.

However, other noticeable achievements was the invite to apply (under sponsorship) for a Webby Award (we didn’t win but amazing to be invited), got interviewed by the local radio station plus we were notified also that Creative Welly was in the top top 4% of content creators on Spotify as well.

Many are still surprised to find out the whole project was funded by:

  1. Sponsorship
  2. Membership
  3. Donations
  4. Affiliate links
  5. Paid participation spots
  6. Selling branded merchandise
  7. Selling tickets to live shows
  8. Our own time and money (independently produced and hosting paid for us).

…and the fact we made so many episodes is a total accomplishment (as again detailed in the above episode, the amount of work which goes into them is a lot).

Recognition

Apart from me there were three entities who made Creative Welly bloom:

ALL the videos were produced by Jono Tucker of Empire Films.

Not only that, this amazing person also aided massively the stupendous visual fidelity of the project.

Can honestly say that without this man Creative Welly wouldn’t have been the artistic success it was, thank you Jono!

Most of the episodes were hosted / shot at FlashDog Studios, thanks to proprietor David Hamilton.

David sadly passed away the day after we shot the final episodes and he will be missed by the photography and film studio community in Wellington.

The first 9 episodes were previously hosted at Xequals offices. Thanks to them and specifically Alex Matthews (who participated in Episode 14) for again believing in the project when it was just an idea.

Epilogue

So, checking against the brief, to both create something unique in the podcast genre which creates intimacy for the participants as well as the viewers and celebrate humans who are doing imaginative things in this fair city and beyond (hence the name):

Creative | adjective : imaginative / original people adding value to the world.

Welly | British informal : with dynamic energy and vigour.

…can smile when I say: we nailed it!

Last week we also held a gathering inviting all who have participated at the new Empire Films studio (like we did back in July 2021) as they were the first to know we were wrapping up the project:

And here’s the monster list of all the episodes in case you missed any:

  1. Jessica Manins & Sarb Johal
  2. Olie Body & Ged Finch
  3. Raqi Syed & Gabe Davidson
  4. Sandy Gildea & Jase Te Pu
  5. Hiria Te Rangi & Guled Mire
  6. Haritina Mogosanu & Gareth Parry
  7. Pia Steiner & Thomas van Raamsdonk
  8. Lindy Nelson & Clive Spink
  9. Janelle Fenwick & Tom Probert
  10. Bron Thomson & Paul Atkins
  11. Elizabeth McNaughton & Rohan Wakefield
  12. Melissa Clark-Reynolds & Cesar Piotto
  13. Mayu Suzuki & Trent Yeo
  14. Audrea Topps Harjo & Alex Matthews
  15. Conrad Johnston & Pat Shephard
  16. Natasha Zimmerman & Ben Preston
  17. Victoria Spackman & Mark Bradford
  18. Anne-Marie Brook & Cody Ellingham
  19. Paula Eskett & Ari Sargent
  20. Karen Fifield & John Holt
  21. Shadoe Stone & Troy Hammond
  22. Jane Guy & Brian Lucid
  23. Samantha Gadd & Phyo Thu
  24. Jo Cribb & James Partridge
  25. Isabella Cawthorn & Richard Shirtcliffe
  26. Glenis Hiria Philip-Barbara & Sam Trubridge
  27. Negin Imani & Derek Bradley
  28. Janine Sudbury & Mark Gee
  29. Emilie Fetscher & James Bushell
  30. Pamela Bell & Josh Forde
  31. Victoria Crockford & James McCulloch
  32. Michelle Kitney & Rob Cousins
  33. Cynthia Hunefeld & Mark Westerby
  34. Bernadette Casey & Tan Huynh
  35. Freda Wells & Dan Neely
  36. Laurinda Thomas & Guy Marriage
  37. Kimberley Gilmour & Joseph Harawira
  38. Antonia Milkop & Dion Howard
  39. Kristen Lunman & Tim Pointer
  40. Dr Hazel Bradshaw & Derek Sivers
  41. Hollie Arnett & Joe Hopkirk
  42. Vida Christeller & Digby Scott
  43. Tania Anderson & Nick Fox
  44. Jenny Cameron & Chris Jackson
  45. Michelle Farrell & Dave Greenberg
  46. Christine Langdon & Duncan Nimmo
  47. Tui Te Hau & Mario Wynands
  48. Hannah Wignall & Craig Mildenhall
  49. Julia Capon & Jake Nash
  50. Jessica Rattray & Paul Tobin
  51. BONUS REVIEW EPISODE: Jono Tucker & DK

Keep having courageous conversations with bold humans!

Published

#48 December 2022 + January 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

READ

Different things are now being considered about the cause of depression (beyond the low levels of serotonin in the brain).

Written in 1998 but nothing has changed: How to Kill Creativity.

This will make you rethink a few things: Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project.

My fav geoglyph is this one: Archaeologists Uncover Nearly 170 Nazca Lines Dating Back About 2,000 Years in Peru.

What has come into the Public Domain Day from 1st January 2023.

My Youtube earnings from the very popular ‘Brick Experiment Channel’ which is a superbly honest breakdown of monies / states / data from a very successful creator.

The Zuck is doubling-down on the failed / failing metaverse plan: Meta is facing the test of its lifetime + read also (& shudder): Meta faces $1.6bn lawsuit over Facebook posts inciting violence in Tigray war.

Urgh: Musk’s Neuralink faces federal inquiry after killing 1,500 animals in testing.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Later is an open source Mac menu bar app that clears and restores your workspace with ease (great for presenters / workshop takers like me).

APITable an API-oriented, open source and easy-to-use visual database for everyone.

Remove noise from voice recordings with this speech enhancement tool from Adobe. Have tried. Is very cool.

This YouTube transcript creator.

If you need a Matrix web-based green code rain screen.

lightyear.fm show how radio broadcasts leave Earth at the speed of light. Scroll away from Earth and hear how far the biggest hits of the past have travelled. The farther away you get, the longer the waves take to travel there—and the older the music you’ll hear.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

Creative Welly Benchmark | The Experimental Journey Continues

78 humans, 39 episodes, over 18 months, one idea to have ‘courageous conversations with bold humans.’

It has been a pure joy to sit down with such a diverse range of leaders. Learning from such talent in such an unencumbered way, celebrating through storytelling their current position in life whilst evolving ideas through simple conversation. Nothing can replace this purely analogue process of interaction for me.

What you might not know is that we record three episodes back-to-back in one day which shocks people but actually it’s so energising whilst I’m in it.

Was validating earlier this year to receive a sponsored opportunity to apply for a Webby Award, basically like the Oscars for the web although it’s pretty pricey to apply. Didn’t win but was lovely to have the opportunity to put the little project forward for it and very nice of the award body to invite us to for free under one category (have a personal gripe about awards you have to pay for although as it was for free thought there was nothing to lose until I then got spammed like hell from their parent company with snail mail (seriously) for other online awards, sighs).

Creative Welly is still a self-funded and voluntary-produced endeavour, in association with video extraordinaire Jono Tucker from Empire Films (special thanks to David from Flashdog Studio for allowing us to utilise the space at cost), and there’s now approximately 65 hours worth of unique video content exploring the creative talent in my network.

And all those episodes are out there as audio as well, uploaded to anchor.fm (which is owned by Spotify) where recently they told us we’re in the top 4% of content creators:

I’d suggest you go subscribe via the site to the video version, as I’ve discussed before, it’s so so unique because it’s specifically designed to create intimacy for the viewer in a never seen before format. If audio is your jam though here’s the subscription options.

So thank to all of the participants up until now. For many it’s been a big deal to step into the public arena in this way and am always enamoured by their bravery.

Am already looking to book in January 2023 recordings and continue on this journey as still got a juicy list of humans to get through. Until then, here’s the bumper list for you to work through for the silly season:

  1. Jessica Manins & Sarb Johal
  2. Olie Body & Ged Finch
  3. Raqi Syed & Gabe Davidson
  4. Sandy Gildea & Jase Te Pu
  5. Hiria Te Rangi & Guled Mire
  6. Haritina Mogosanu & Gareth Parry
  7. Pia Steiner & Thomas van Raamsdonk
  8. Lindy Nelson & Clive Spink
  9. Janelle Fenwick & Tom Probert
  10. Bron Thomson & Paul Atkins
  11. Elizabeth McNaughton & Rohan Wakefield
  12. Melissa Clark-Reynolds & Cesar Piotto
  13. Mayu Suzuki & Trent Yeo
  14. Audrea Topps Harjo & Alex Matthews
  15. Conrad Johnston & Pat Shephard
  16. Natasha Zimmerman & Ben Preston
  17. Victoria Spackman & Mark Bradford
  18. Anne-Marie Brook & Cody Ellingham
  19. Paula Eskett & Ari Sargent
  20. Karen Fifield & John Holt
  21. Shadoe Stone & Troy Hammond
  22. Jane Guy & Brian Lucid
  23. Samantha Gadd & Phyo Thu
  24. Jo Cribb & James Partridge
  25. Isabella Cawthorn & Richard Shirtcliffe
  26. Glenis Hiria Philip-Barbara & Sam Trubridge
  27. Negin Imani & Derek Bradley
  28. Janine Sudbury & Mark Gee
  29. Emilie Fetscher & James Bushell
  30. Pamela Bell & Josh Forde
  31. Victoria Crockford & James McCulloch
  32. Michelle Kitney & Rob Cousins
  33. Cynthia Hunefeld & Mark Westerby
  34. Bernadette Casey & Tan Huynh
  35. Freda Wells & Dan Neely
  36. Laurinda Thomas & Guy Marriage
  37. Kimberley Gilmour & Joseph Harawira
  38. Antonia Milkop & Dion Howard
  39. Kristen Lunman & Tim Pointer
Published

Creative Welly 2020 Review | Lessons From Nearly 18 Hours Of Conversations

After 11 episodes with 22 impressive humans covering nearly 18 hours of conversations, has it been worth it?

The calibre of guests and their subsequent discussions has been impressive (see below). It’s been such a joy to bring together interesting souls who don’t know each other to explore connections and insights. It certainly celebrating the talent we have in the capital and have learned so much from the discussions.

As an a side, very aware of the positive relationships formed as well as the community being built up through the alums.

Creative Welly is an advertising / sponsor free project and the biggest cost is the time for all involved. It takes a whole day to set up then record two episodes. Then there’s the video editing, reviewing, blog post creation, audio production, uploading all content, distribution etc. I pay for the Vimeo Plus account and a few episodes in switched from the paid audio podcast hosting of Libsyn to the free Anchor platform.

In terms of how many views and / or listens, don’t know. Haven’t looked. This is the deficit in the plan as don’t have the time to promote and upload across multiple platforms, although, to be very honest, this is both not the reason to start this (but totally appreciate for many this is the validating factor).

From a production perspective, there is nothing like this out there. It’s exhilarating to see the result of my vision to craft something unique in the long-form video podcast format space come to fruition.

That being said, the focus next year will be:

  • hone the format: amplify the ‘courageous’ bit of the conversations;
  • promotional collateral: before posting live and during review create some shorter form content for cross-platform promotion (Linkedin / Twitter / blog content etc.);
  • 2021 list: continue to curate and focus on revealing the wonderful talent the city (and those passing through) has to offer.

So if you’re not subscribed here’s a quick run down on who you’re missing out on:

1. Jessica Manins, Co-Founder & CEO, Beyond & Sarb Johal, Clinical Psychologist and Youtube Creator
2. Olie Body, Social Entrepreneur & Executive Menstruator & Ged Finch, X-frame
3. Raqi Syed, Digital Artist & Gabe Davidson, Cocoa Bean Hunter
4. Sandy Gildea, Executive Director, Screen Producers NZ & Jase Te Patu, Founder of M3 Mindfulness for children, Co-owner Awhi Yoga and Wellbeing
5. Hīria Te Rangi, Kaiwhakahaere o Whare Hauora & Guled Mire, Community Advocate & Co-founder, Third Culture Minds
6. Haritina Mogoșanu, Astrobiologist and Space Science Communicator & Gareth Parry, Creating spaces for people to work together, Partner at PwC New Zealand
7. Pia Steiner, Senior Advisor Organisational Development at Ministry of Justice & Thomas van Raamsdonk, Irritator and Inspirer. Building performance geek. GM for Pro Clima in Australia & New Zealand
8. Lindy Nelson, Founded AWDTNZ and AmplyfyingUs: a Podcast in service to the mission & Clive Spink, Chief Executive Pūkeko Pictures
9. Janelle (Jay) Fenwick, Founder – Teulo CPD Education Platform & Tom Probert, Head of Marketing and Innovation – Powershop
10. Bron Thomson, Founder and CEO, Springload & Paul Atkins, Chief Executive, ZEALANDIA
11. Elizabeth McNaughton – Cofounder and Director of Hummingly & Rohan Wakefield – CEO & Cofounder at Enspiral Dev Academy

A cacophony of thanks, not only to the guests for sharing their generous times, stories and insights, but also deep appreciation to Alex at Xequals for hosting us, plus Jono from Empire Films for producing the superb and unique final videos.

If you’re a viewer / listener please feel free to drop me a line or comment below with any ideas / suggestions for improvement I’m missing out on here, and please subscribe via Creative Welly if you haven’t already.

Published

Narrative Podcasting | Learning Out Loud

different podcast types

Learning. Unlearning. Relearning.

I produced my first podcast nearly a decade ago. I went on to create over 200 more plus taught hundreds / thousands of others how to do it themselves via my social media courses / masterclasses.

Over the New Year break I spent some time unlearning what I know from this Alex Blumberg “Power Your Podcast with Storytelling” Creative Live course. Once you acclimatise to the nervous teaching style (sorry), there’s some fantastic gems for those who are new to this narrative style via Alex’s huge pedigree in this space (award-winning reporter and producer for This American Life and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money plus his new Startup podcast series).

As I’m highly kinaesthetic in my learning style I’ve been doing to learn.

Offered here with permission from Dennis Hodges (the interviewee) is my first attempt at narrative style podcasting:

Here’s what I learned:

  • have the story in mind before you start: sometimes other stories come out during an interview although having a story you want at least enables you to come out with something solid;
  • focus on one thing: you’ll hear from the outcome that I focussed on just the politicians eyes work. There was lots of other stuff we talked about which was equally as interesting, just this was something that was very different;
  • you have to be ruthless: we spoke for over 30mins and I got it down to just over 4mins which was hard work cutting out good stuff;
  • getting the interviewee to record their audio doesn’t always work: Dennis has a lot of audio hiss in the background which I tried for ages to clean up. Getting interviewees to record a sample in the future will help a lot (my audio could do with a rounder feel to it as well for which I’ll use my new mic in the future);
  • editing takes forever: seriously, ages!

I’m relearning the medium and upping my game for wysdem.com, and during my research I’ve noticed four types of podcasts:

  1. Soloing / Group—just one person or a group sharing ideas / insights / observations. Sometimes scripted, sometimes loose in its form. Sparse editing is employed and it’s the main model used by most video podcasters / vodcasters / vloggers as well;
  2. Interviews—simple one-to-one question and answer sessions. Medium investment in editing to ensure tidiness and the focus is very much on the interviewee and their offerings;
  3. Narrative—heavily edited and crafted. Emphasis is on the storytelling and clarity of theme / subject matter.

Each have their place although the latter is gaining more traction although it’s obviously the hardest to do well with it’s focus on crafting something the listener consumes as a cognitive or emotional journey.

So feel free to critique and offer ideas / guidance on the above.

It’s a first offering and an attempt to ‘learn out loud’ so approach with kindness which I’m sure you will. Thanks in advance.

Podcast music credit: Toivo161 via freesound.org
Thanks to @foomandoonian for suggesting the ‘group’ type.
Published