SongWriter

SongWriter is a podcast and live performance series that turns stories into songs. Created and hosted by Ben Arthur, SongWriter aspires to ignite deep personal connections to emotional themes explored by diverse storytellers. 

This project funds one full season of SongWriter, which will result in 13 episodes and three SongWriter Live events, staging three of the episodes for in-person or virtual conference alignment.

Stories with themes pertaining to areas of human flourishing and written by participating authors will be shared and discussed with scientists studying those areas.  In response to these conversations, participating singer/songwriters will write and perform new songs based on the topics discussed. Many of the scientists planned to be featured are Templeton World Charity Foundation grantees, chosen by the podcast lead. By associating scientific work on human flourishing with stories by the best storytellers working today, and by translating those stories into music, SongWriter will encode and communicate scientific work in a way that no white paper or article can. 

In addition to producing these podcasts, Arthur reaches a broad and diverse audience through multiple outlets for the podcast's dissemination. This includes a preview article for each episode in Paste magazine and a segment on the nationally syndicated radio program Acoustic Cafe, which airs on 100+ US radio stations for 1.5 million listeners.

The episodes will be delivered across a variety of media outputs, with approximately 20 million impressions. The campaign will also be supported by a modest advertising budget geographically targeting an international, English-speaking audience.