‘Curiosity in Rising’ - Contextual Report of My Digital Artefact

Looking back at my DA's first few months

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It’s been another crazy, busy semester but I feel that the work I’m putting into my latest digital artefact is paying off, and I can’t help but look back at the first few months of Curiosity in Rising’s existence and feel a great sense of pride. In this final update for BCM114, I’ll summarise what’s been happening recently in regards to the artefact’s growth and look back at it’s development trajectory, reflecting on the new skills I picked up along the way, keeping in mind the social utility that my project has provided so far.

Looking back to earlier on in the semester when it was time for us to first ideate our projects and conceptualise and plan them, Curiosity in Rising was actually envisioned as something rather different than what it ended up becoming. My original idea was to create a podcast that challenged modern spirituality and explained the full context of spiritual communities in terms of highlighting how western spirituality is very often appropriating eastern spirituality in a rather problematic manner. Part of this did transpire, I dedicated the sixth podcast episode to an investigation into cultural spirituality and racism, but for the most part, the original vision changed during the semester throughout the various iterations of my project. This was thanks to audience feedback, looking at analytics provided by my social media accounts and also just following my gut and doing things that I enjoyed.

A part of my DA that came into fruition a couple weeks in was the ‘Song of the Week’. In the second episode I announced this segment would occur weekly with a reel on Instagram. I set out to find songs which I believed were good for people's spiritual health, with empowering or affirmative lyrics. Starting with Beyoncé's 'COZY', in which she sings about feeling comfortable in your own skin and finding peace with who you are.

As evident in the third reels insight screenshot, I found that changing the thumbnail of reels into colourful stills has dramatically increased the amount of views the reels get. I've also found that hashtags like #sydneysmallbusiness #discoverunder1k #contentcreator and #newpodcast have been the most successful ones to use. I did some testing and tweaking of this theory, posting content with and without these specific hashtags, before coming to this conclusion.

Something that occurred around the middle of the semester was my pivot of target audience. Originally having a vision of mostly young people tuning into the podcast, I decided to consider a different audience was being reached - my TikTok analytics showed that middle aged women were making up 40% of my following. I also saw that many people liking my content on Instagram were other spiritual accounts, so instead of making my content for young people with zero knowledge on spirituality I decided to consider that most of my audience likely already had a decent amount of knowledge on spirituality.

Another idea I added to my DA a couple weeks in was the TikTok account, on which I did a few mini vlog videos, showing my days at uni and recording my podcast. The video above is my most successful piece of content from the artefact, getting hundreds of views and likes.

Completing the 'empathise' and 'define' parts of the design process whilst creating Curiosity in Rising in September allowed me to pump out a great amount of podcast episodes. At the time of posting this blog, there are nine episodes available, and there will be three more dropping over the next month before CIR goes on a summer hiatus. Then, I'm planning on making my next artefact for BCM a second season of the podcast!

Using platforms like Canva and Prequel have aided me in creating aesthetic and well polished visual posts like the one above. Over the summer break when there are no podcast episodes to work on I will be keeping the Instagram page active and working on eye-catching graphics to build my following and hopefully increase the level of reach Curiosity in Rising can experience.

Something which occurred this week was my DA podcast making it onto the Apple Podcast charts! I was thrilled to receive this information in my email's:

Using the podcast release platform RSS.com has been a positive experience which provides me with current and interesting analytics regarding my streams.

Seeing that I've reached countries like Portugal, Belgium, USA and even cities in Australia that I've never been to makes me feel pretty accomplished and makes the podcast more enjoyable when I have this in mind.

I've tested content creation with the new app from Pinterest: shuffles. It's super fun and simple and creates smooth looking collages which I'll continue to use. Ticking off the collaborative component of my digital artefact was done in more than one way. Fellow BCM students Alana Todorovski and Hani Laveymi have appeared as guests on the podcast, and Alicia Cassidy collaborated with me in creating Curiosity in Rising's logo.

Design by fellow BCM student Alicia Cassidy

So, wrapping up, I feel incredibly happy looking back at the last few months and all the work that's been achieved in BCM114 with my digital artefact. I learned more about the algorithms of Instagram and TikTok, I learned how podcasts are published to major platforms and how you can monetise them through different forums like Podcorn.com. I learned more about myself and my morals through the podcast discussions with my guests and I learned how to make good looking content such as reels on canva. I feel I've grown a lot as a media student with this project and am looking very much forward to the next season and all the skills I can one day apply to a career in social and digital media!

You can listen to the episodes on all major streaming platforms now and follow along on Instagram @curiosityinrisingpod