#12. What A Wonderful World!

There is more to me/ than what I know today./ I will stretch my hands up to the sky,/ to say, " I am afraid but I will try."- Morgan Harper Nichols.( All Along You Were Blooming., page. 169).

My achievements from the Bearman Arts Entrepreneurship Fellowship, Special Projects class are:

         I.            Consistently wrote blog posts on my weekly reflections from the fellowship and the learning process. This is a transferable skill that I can continue with to keep my followers engaged on social media channels.

       II.            Much better than when I resumed the fellowship, I understand more about the components of storyboarding, how to develop a strong narrative episode from readings to narration to interviewing guests, and then preparing scripts for a narrative podcast. This has given me the confidence to consider approaching Season 2 in an interview format.

This skill readily came useful to help my students in PUBL 612( Law and Public Policy) who took to a Podcast Research for their final project.

     III.            On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest measure of success, I will grade myself 9.5 with the task of conducting research on stories of hymns, sacred music, gospel songs, and songwriters’ stories for the podcast “Story Behind Songs We Love”, with Africa and African diaspora audience as my target.

    IV.            On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest measure of success, I will grade myself 3 with the task of conducting research on African stories of Church music and gospel songs written or sung by African and African diasporas. This will make an excellent feature to complement interviews. During the fellowship, I identified a complementary project “Nigerian Christian Songs: A Digital Interactive Songbook” (hosted by Baylor University Center for Christian Music Studies) that I should follow up with.

      V.            I learned the basics of sound editing software, with a self-assessed score of 7/10. I am spending more time with Audacity rather than Reaper. As I have learned once I gain proficiency in one software, I can do more with another.

    VI.            I spent time improving my design skills using Canva and Data Visualization Tools (Python). What I have outstanding are the designs for Season 2, which I should begin to work on after finals.

   VII.            I know better from the guest lecture all about legal approaches to surviving in the music business. I recognize where podcasting lies in Copyright Law, and to go about using copyright-protected music and lyrics.

 VIII.            By every standard imagined, I have a home podcast studio! Yes, I spend a large chunk of my fellowship funds to acquire equipment and set up my home podcast studio. This will go a long way to improve the podcast production process.

     IX.            I participated in Towson University’s Digital Storytelling Workshop (April 8, 30, 2022) and the Measure of Music three-day weekend program/a crash course (with a deliverable project on music and data, I worked in a team on NFTs in Music, from Friday, February 25 to Sunday, February 27, 2022).

       X.            From my biographic readings, videos, and audios I listened to, and the workshop led by Professor Linda Dusman, I can confidently say that I  understand the basics of Music entrepreneurship to make a success with podcast distribution, marketing, and monetization.