History

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