Contest stages | Potential barriers | Potential solution |
Organising | Steering committee members may not comprise experts who have experience in audio interventions and may privilege ‘traditional’ modes | Ensure representation by individuals who appreciate and can provide expert input on audio interventions. |
Soliciting | Instructions may not give participants to impression that audio interventions are accepted and encouraged. Barriers to entry for song-writing competitions may be high, which may privilege audio ideas or entries with high production value | Traditional song-writing or poetry competition instructions should be incorporated into the present open call instructions. Ensuring that submission criteria focus largely on a low common denominator (eg, lyrics or script/poem, alongside a sample of recorded segment) |
Promoting | Participants may not be aware that songs, spoken word, podcasts and radio-friendly submissions are acceptable modes of submitting entries. | Other crowdsourcing activities have adopted specific music categories that have helped market innovation challenges to communities of songwriters or artists. |
Judging | It may be tough to judge music submissions or audio submissions against visual art or other forms of text-based submissions Guidelines for judging audio submissions may not be clear or may not align with traditional judging criteria for audio submissions | To create a separate category for judging based on audio submissions Ensure that an expert panel of judges is organised that can provide input on audio submissions |
Mentorship and capacity-building | Designathons may focus largely on full health intervention proposals, but have focused less on building capacity for individuals who have submitted audio entries | Ensure that capacity-building sessions are relevant to participants in an audio category |
Sharing | Dissemination channels typically leverage on academic or research-focused platforms Lack of engagement from commercial entities (eg, record labels or broadcasting platforms) to assist with further dissemination of song and audio submissions. | Ensuring that audio submissions are provided with opportunities to showcase their work on appropriate platforms (eg, audio streaming services, creating lyric videos for online video platforms) Ensuring that commercial entities, such as broadcasting channels, record labels, songwriters, or artistes are engaged early on to commit to dissemination of such innovations to a wider audience |