Champions of Curiosity Awards 2020: Best Use of Creative Visuals or Interactivity
The Champions of Curiosity Awards is Hearken’s annual celebration of community listening, community building, and needs-based service approaches that make the world a better place. Throughout this challenging year, Hearken’s partners pulled through and delivered innovative projects that best served their communities, and we wanted to honor the impressive work they did.
How we picked winners: Our team at Hearken evaluated submissions based on the use of a Hearken service or platform, the creativity of the approach, solution, or offering, and the potential for others to replicate or model it. The winners are Hearken partners who’ve exemplified a commitment to engagement as good business through community-building and listening.
Winner: Bay Curious by KQED
What They Did:
Before the pandemic, the Bay Curious team had been thinking about making a zine, but when Governor Gavin Newsom announced the shelter-in-place orders in March, they transitioned it into the idea of an activity book. “We thought it would be a service to make something light-hearted that could help people explore the areas around their houses with new eyes. We wanted it to be fun for adults and kids, and apply no matter where folks live.” Katrina Schwartz, Producer at Bay Curious, shared with us.
Katrina and the team tapped into the creativity of the entire KQED staff for ideas and sourced actual content from all over the organization. They got their design team involved early on because they knew they wanted to create coloring pages based on past Bay Curious episodes and illustrations that will accompany different activities. Once they hashed out the plan, it all came together quickly and was live by mid-summer when people were extremely ready for something new and different.
Why We Picked Them:
The Bay Curious team regularly exemplifies public-powered audience engagement, but this project went above and beyond the functioning of day-to-day outreach and content creation. It showcased astute listening and anticipation of audience needs, delivering an activity as a creative form of engagement that was both different and responsive to the extraordinary pressures and lifestyle changes caused by COVID.
Key Lessons:
- Take risks: Thinking outside the box about ways to serve your community can result in offerings that are more creative, unique, and memorable.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help: Involving more people within your organization within the project or even solicit input from your community both lightens the load and improves the likelihood of a buy-in that you’ll need for an initiative to be successful. In this case, the list of helpers to thank includes: Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Asal Ehsanipour, Kate Hawkins, Kelly Heigert, Rebecca Kao, Amanda Stupi, Mark Fiore, Zaldy Serrano, Erika Aguilar, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong, and Holly Kernan.
- Consider your timing: Aligning your community projects and initiatives with when your audience will be most ready and receptive is an important factor for success.
Honorable Mentions:
Curious about what other work is being done in this category?
Oregon State University Alumni Association and their Regional Network Director Callie Kennel deserve a shoutout for the work they did to create BEaver KIND (You Are Strong) videos. Callie mobilized alumni volunteers in the OSUAA network to submit positive messages to students and alumni to remind them: “We are here for you. And YOU ARE STRONG.” Messages of encouragement from alumni were shared on the OSUAA page and through the social hashtag #BEaverSTRONG.
Read about other 2020 winners:
- Best Participation by a Question-asker, Community Member, or Steward
- Best Listening During a Live Event
- Best Collaboration Between Organizations
- Most Creative Promotional Strategy
- Best New Hearken Use-case
- Best Use of Community Listening & Response in a Crisis
- Best Overall Service, Offering, Or Outcome
Want to become a Champion of Curiosity? We want that, too! Check out more about what we do and who we work with at wearehearken.com, follow us on Twitter @wearehearken, or sign up for our newsletter, The Hearkening.
