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