The Disciple Award celebrates changemakers who harness the power of community to create positive transformation. We're excited to introduce our first winner: Magnus Godøy.

At just 16, Magnus has created Unikultur, a community that connects young creatives across Norway. His vision for a supportive space where teenagers can share their art, music, and other creative pursuits caught our attention.

Magnus's use of the Disciple platform to build meaningful connections, combined with his clear passion for nurturing young talent, made him stand out. His community embodies what we believe in - bringing people together around shared interests in a focused, supportive environment.

In this interview, Magnus shares his journey, his vision for Unikultur, and how he's using Disciple to make it happen.

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hey!

My name is Magnus Godøy. I'm 16 years old, and come from the countryside of western Norway. One of my greatest hobbies is music and art, and I have been playing the piano for over eight years now. I have found great joy and achievement from the instrument, but I’ve always felt as if someone was missing. This was what sparked my passion for creating Unikultur.

Earlier this year, I realized that even though I have performed at concerts, competed in competitions, and played the piano for countless hours at home, I have done most of this alone. I realized that I knew very few other young musicians and artists. I deeply wanted to share my work and connect with other young musicians, but knew none.

"Why is this?" I asked myself, "Why is it so hard for young musicians, artists and creatives to meet like-minded teenagers?"

I figured there had to be a better and easier way for us to connect with each other, and the idea of a unifying community came to my mind. I imagined a community of teenagers who wanted to share their work, talk to others with similar hobbies, explore different art forms, and discover other teenagers’ talent. A community for creative teenagers who wanted to connect with others — but didn’t know how.

And thus, Unikultur was born.

2. Tell us more about your community.

In Norwegian, the word "kultur" is a collective term for all creative activities. This includes music, art, dancing, acting, photography, filmmaking, crafts, sculpting, and much more. The first three letters, “Uni”, stands for the Norwegian equivalent of “Unite.” So, Unikultur is a community that unites teenagers with passions for all different kinds of creative activities.

Our community is designed for teenagers aged 13-20 with a passion or an interest in a creative activity. Using our Disciple-powered app, users can post pictures and videos of their work, send messages to teenagers with similar hobbies, join different groups based on interest, find information about cultural events, discover other teenagers’ work, and much more. I want to give our users a safe place to express themselves, free of all the noise, hate and trolling on larger social media apps. What truly makes the Unikultur community special is that it is extremely supportive — no people who aren’t interested in creative activities or are outside of the age group use the app. We find great strength in being niche.

The Unikultur community is not officially launched yet, but we are really looking forward to it. As it is now, Unikultur is accessible as a web-version for a test group, but we have a waitlist of over 100 teenagers waiting for the app to launch.

3. What motivated you to explore independent platforms rather than using traditional ones like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube?

When I started building my community, I discovered that there is a huge difference between media sharing platforms and community platforms. The platforms mentioned above are all media sharing platforms: the more content you consume, the more money the app makes off of you. Unfortunately, very few platforms genuinely focus on building meaningful communities —because it is hard to make money this way. One of the exceptions is Disciple. When I first discovered Disciple, I instantly fell in love with it. Disciple is a community-building platform that truly focuses on building meaningful communities — and their business model proves it.

Before I discovered Disciple I tried to use other platforms, but with little success. People just don’t feel safe enough to express themselves on the larger platforms — not even in a Snapchat group. However, once our Disciple community went live for a small test group of 40 people, things exploded — and within a week, the test group had posted over 50 individual posts showcasing their creative works.

This really shows the difference between media sharing platforms and genuine community platforms.

4. How will you integrate both in-person and online events to enrich your community and enhance the member experience?

I believe that events — both physical and online events – are crucial for building a community. Unikultur has already hosted our first physical event, and we plan on doing many more — a social gathering in October, a Christmas workshop in December, and a large concert plus art exhibition in February.

I also want to use online events and have many ideas of what we could do. Some of these ideas include online workshops, like "Learn this simple piano song that sounds really impressive"; online challenges and competitions, like "Paint the best nature painting in one hour to win a prize"; and online art exhibitions and concerts.

I think this is a great way to bring our community together around a common activity!

5. What are your key goals for the community over the next 12 months?

It’s hard to predict how much our community of young musicians, artists and creatives will grow, but I have goals and ambitions. I’m hoping to reach at least 1000 members within a year, maybe even more. Given the fact that our community uses Norwegian language rather than English, our target audience is quite small. Therefore, 1000 teenagers who do creative activities is a lot.

However, having thousands of members matters nothing unless the community is meaningful. A large part of my goals and ambitions goes beyond what’s measurable. I want to create an inclusive and innovative community where teenagers who do creative activities feel respected, safe and valued.

This goal can only be felt, not measured. But I will know within myself once it has been achieved.

If you have already built a successful community, I'd love to hear from you. If you want to help me out, please send a message to magnus@unikultur.no