Poetry meets design pedagogy in The WoW Project: Collaborations on ‘The Moving Poet’ to ‘start the conversation’

Abstract

The WoW Project – Words on Wheels; Words on Water – is a public transport poetry venture in development, seeking to bring poetry to Sydneysiders (and then others) commuting to work – on buses, light rail, trains, and ferries. The project attributes its genesis to two major public transport schemes in London and New York, where established and legacy poetry is displayed on posters throughout each city’s public transport system. Locally, while upholding established and legacy poets, the project seeks to support new and emerging poets. Additionally, and importantly, the poetry in this project is interested in igniting social justice, equity, and advocacy issues – poetry to start a conversation. ‘The Moving Poet’ is the pilot product of The WoW Project, a collaboration between University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Creative Writing staff (former and current) and UTS undergraduate Visual Communication students. Throughout one semester in 2020, Creative Writing staff became clients of the students’ simulated design company Salt Studio, collaborating at the intersection of text, image, and place. Staff stepped into a space unknown to them as the students designed 20 posters, thematically and conceptually framed, of poetry by eight Australian poets; developed social media interfaces; and produced teaser videos of the concept for pitching to potential funders and supporters. The collective goal, underpinning both practice and pedagogy, is to use these artefacts to provoke conversation about social injustice in a bid to incite discussion, particularly in an Australian context; to surprise commuters by ‘scattering’ poems in public places; and to generate further interactions from these poems through social media and digital responses. Drawing on both the field of creative writing and its place within a design education context, this article traces the project from its inception, including its positioning within similar projects internationally, to writing and design collaboration, to its final stage of presentation of deliverables. It outlines the project’s next steps, namely engaging with industry and community partners for full execution.