About

 What is it?

Wordcore Wayfinders is a celebration of change and immersive impact storytelling, focusing on impactful topics and future-forward storytelling methods. This innovative initiative merges poetry, music, and visual art into dynamic and engaging experiences designed to captivate and inspire.

Key Elements of Wayfinders

• Live Performance with Impact Stories:
  Bringing powerful narratives to life through live spoken word, music, and visual storytelling that address meaningful, real-world topics.

• Inter-Arts Installation and Exhibition:
  Creating cohesive installations that blend poetry, music, and visual art into a seamless and immersive experience, pushing the boundaries of multidisciplinary collaboration.

• Interactive and Participatory Experiences:
  Inviting the audience to actively engage with the installations, whether by participating in the creative process or interacting with the work itself, fostering a deep and personal connection to the art.

How Wayfinders Began

Wayfinders evolved from the Wordcore movement, which centers on the fusion of spoken word and music. While Wordcore focuses on the power of performance poetry, Wayfinders adds an exciting new dimension—inter-arts installations with interactive visual art.

This project is like a creative “blind date,” where poets, musicians, and visual artists are matched to collaboratively create unique, site-specific works. These creations are then presented as interactive art installations, culminating in live performances that combine spoken word and music.

Why Wayfinders?

Wayfinders is more than an artistic project; it’s a platform for change. By combining immersive storytelling with impact-driven themes, it encourages collaboration, innovation, and audience engagement, amplifying stories that matter.

The Wordcore Wayfinders are Immersive Impact Storytellers

What is Immersive Impact Storytelling?

To create new and lasting impact we need to create experiences that disrupt and engage with us on a personal level. Wordcore Wayfinders encourages experimentation and working outside of our comfort zones to explore new forms of storytelling that can create impact and allow su to experience poetry, music and visual art in different ways from what we expect and are used to. This is Immersive Impact Storytelling. Immersive Impact Storytelling and Immersive experiences have become an established field internationally, offering a unique form of creative expression that actively involves and envelops the observer. These experiences can be delivered either in person or virtually. The defining feature of immersive art lies in its ability to provide audiences with meticulously designed, multisensory environments that captivate and engage. Impact storytelling, on the other hand, uses compelling narratives to communicate the significance and outcomes of a work. It serves as a powerful tool to drive positive change and inspire action, often tied to a real-world call to action. Wordcore Wayfinders combines the principles of immersive experiences with the power of impact storytelling. This fusion equips creatives with the skills to contribute to experiential marketing, social impact initiatives, and multimedia productions, positioning them as leaders in crafting narratives that inspire and engage.

Who is Wordcore Wayfinders for?

Our community spans a diverse range of individuals and groups who are passionate about creativity, change, and innovation. This includes those who support changemakers and activists, as well as schools, educators, and parents striving to create a brighter, more inclusive future. We also target storytellers across disciplines—writers, musicians, and visual artists—who are eager to collaborate, experiment, and push the boundaries of their craft. These creatives may be early or mid-career practitioners, or even established artists seeking new ways to engage audiences through immersive and impactful storytelling. Our ideal audience also includes digital storytellers and immersive media innovators who are exploring cutting-edge techniques to captivate audiences. These individuals are not only creators but also collaborators, interested in forming networks that amplify the reach and impact of their work. Finally, Wordcore Wayfinders appeals to changemakers, project managers, and commissioners who see the potential of immersive impact storytelling as a tool for experiential marketing, social impact initiatives, and transformative artistic productions. Together, we aim to build a community dedicated to fostering creativity, inspiring action, and sharing the stories of Aotearoa with the world.

Quotes from participants 2024: 

I participated as a musician in a Wayfinders event at the Auckland silos, collaborating with a young talented poet. It was a great way of exploring my music in a different way, and our content promoted the use of Te Reo and a connection to the New Zealand landscape. The audience was appreciative of the relaxing sounds and artforms, allowing them to de-stress after a work-day in busy Auckland City. 

The camaraderie and support of other arts practitioners involved was a boost for our creative confidence and development. I'd highly recommend Wayfinders as a means of promoting inclusiveness, and for connecting performance arts with a new audience.

John Goudge (musician/actor/writer)

Wayfinders -Aotearoa - is part of the New Zealand Wordcore movement working with Digital Storytelling and Immersive Experiences to create impactful installations and performances that explores new forms of poetry and storytelling. 

"We navigate by the stars of the mind to guide us towards new lands of change" Zin Uru

Wordcore Wayfinders Started in 2024 with the first collaboration and Immersive Experience for the Doc Edge Festival 2024, supported by Eke Panuku and Doc Edge. 

Wordcore Wayfinders delivered 4 unique immersive inter arts pieces and performances as part of the Doc Edge festival 12-14 July 2024 at Silo 6. This was held in one of the Silos as part of the Doc Edge Festival, sharing installation spaces with other Immersive exhibition pieces from the festival including projections by Johnson Witehira and award winning work by Shivani Karam. 

The Second installation of the work was for Poetry Day 2024, Friday 23rd August. This was supported by Eke Panuku, Doc Edge and NZ Poetry Day ( with a small amount if seed funding). There was also a special guest performance by Tim Fastnedge with a unique and progressive laser harp setup, and installations of interactive poetry by Christian Jensen. 

The original concept of the project comes from the two directors previous projects being Metonymy 2009 - 2011 created by Christian Jensen  - a successful collaborative exhibition project pairing up poets with visual artists that had 100+ submissions and 16 works(pairs) completed by the 3rd year, which exhibited at Corbans Estate and the Kerouac Effect / the Wordcore Effect  - the original musician and poet match up project in New Zealand created by Shane Hollands 

The Objective

The main objective of the project is to create an immersive storytelling experience that features visual artists, poets and musicians, to create an inter arts installation including objects and architectural designs or structures along with a written and musical component. The trios will be guided by established inter arts Wayfinder practitioners.

A musician, a visual artist and a poet will be asked to create an inter art work over an 12 week period that will have a poem component, a musical component and a visual arts component. We ask that all 3 creatives participate in the creation of a unified work together and are encouraged to blur the lines between the artforms and find ways to work collectively rather than ‘stitching 3 separate pieces together as one’

The Outcome

the Wayfinders Exhibition - as a part of Doc Edge Immersive Exhibition 2024 at Silo 6 for a 3 week period,  25th june - 13 july 2025. This will also involve opportunities to have material, artwork and content for sale during that period. We are asking the Musician, Artist and Poet to work together to create a work that has Sound, Spoken/Written Words and Visual elements. Over an 8 week period we expect physical meetups/rehearsals that results in a process of creating a unique and collective piece with equal contribution. We offer support and guidance along the way that will give us an inter arts piece at the end that will be part of the Wordcore Effect as well as the Exhibition.

The Worcore Wayfinders Event year 1- 22 August 2025 (NZ Poetry Day ) Te Puna Creative Hub- each trio will create a performance piece of max 15 minutes. The performance will also include a visual and/or installation element that will be presented in the space and with the performance. The work should be made so that it can be presented as a visual component, a live music and spoken word performance and include a theatrical stage presence in some form or way. We encourage the trios to explore ways of creating physical and digital components that can be sold as art ( if that is wanted ) as we aim to create opportunities both at the event / venue and on a website later for sales of the work.


Year 2 and beyond: Work with content from first year as a project incubator, developing the show and content with the potential of presenting to tour at venues or festivals. Wordcore Wayfinders will work towards creating opportunities for the Trios and Wordcore Bands, while opening up the process for another round of Wordcore Wayfinder Trios. We will likely limit the update of new trios to 4 new trios each year. 

The Process

The Trios – One Artist, Musician and Poet – will be invited to create work over a 8 week period where an artist is invited to collaborate with a musician and a poet to create a performance and installation piece.

The Artists, poets and musicians can be existing creatives involved in the Exhibitions or new pairings.

The Opening Night Performance will then live on as an installation work as part of the exhibition

The Performance itself can be between 9 – 15 minutes long, but does not need to be in a traditional spoken word recital format.

We will limit it to 6-8 trios for the second year

We will aim to travel to Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington with the installation and performance.

The Art/Visual Artist

the Work should be created as Interactive Installation Work

Interactive Installation Work is commonly either Set Design, Props, Costume or Projection Art but we are open to hear any interpretations or ideas that lends itself towards an interactive installation work.

The Art must be created as a layer of immersion to the performance of the poet and the musician.

The Poetry/Spoken Word Artist

The Poetry can be in any form the trios decide, but must talk about and Impact Topic, meaning something related to Non-Fiction that is connected to a call to action, Change or real life

It must also touch on the exhibition concept of “Making the invisible shine”, but we are open to this being interpreted in any way the trio sees fit.

The Music/Audio Artist

The Music can be anything but should be performed live for the Wordcore Event.

The Music should be developed with the visual artist and the spoken word artist and engage with the work as a co-creation for the project.

Ideally there will be a recorded element of the music, even if this is of the live performance that becomes part of the exhibition after the performance.