WOMEN'S RESEARCH WĀNANGA (WRW) is an umbrella arts research project delivering personal and professional development opportunities for independent artists investigating the female experience: feminine ways of doing and being, feminine bases of knowledge and critical engagement. 

WRW was founded by Rychèl Thérin Scott, who brought together the first research group of five women in September 2023.

WRW applies Wānanga methodologies (Mahuika & Mahuika, 2020) to collaboration. Wānanga is a Māori term denoting knowledge acquisition through the open discussion of differing thoughts, opinions and experiences over a period of days where the group live, sleep, work, cook and eat together as a chosen family unit.

This way of working challenges individualised, hierarchical and productivity-driven models of artistic research. Knowledge is understood as something that emerges through relation — between people, materials, places and experiences — rather than something that is extracted, owned or resolved.

By working through wānanga, WRW seeks to cultivate forms of artistic practice that are collective, situated and responsive, allowing complexity, disagreement and care to coexist. The emphasis is not on arriving at singular conclusions, but on sustaining conditions in which shared enquiry, critical reflection and collective imagination can take place.

WRW VALUES inclusivity, intersectionality, nurturing community, climate awareness, good vibrations, humour, accessibility, radical kinship, tough questions, queer lives, feminist perspectives, decolonial positionally, research, critical thinking and complex answers. 

CONTACT VIA IG: @wrw_project