FROM WUNDER GYM TO CO-CREATIVE IMMERSIVE KNOWLEDGE

Wunder Gym began as a platform for creative exploration, connection and confidence-building. Through its programs, mentoring, experimentation and community partnerships, it has evolved into a way of bringing people together to make, exchange and experience ideas.

What happens when creative practice becomes a way for communities to generate, share and continually build
knowledge together?

This question has led to the development of the Co-Creative Immersive Knowledge Framework (CIKF), a research-informed methodology emerging from Annette Wagner’s artistic and practice-led research, developed through her Doctor of Philosophy, completed in April 2026, which explored ethnographic and auto-ethnographic approaches to creative practice.

CIKF extends the social and creative principles of Wunder Gym into a framework for Shared Knowledge Labs. Rather than treating participants simply as workshop or program attendees, audiences or contributors, it positions them as active co-producers whose experiences, memories, observations, ideas and creative responses become part of an evolving knowledge environment.

From creative participation to shared knowledge

Wunder Gym provides the social and creative environment: a place for people to experiment, connect with others, work with artists and mentors, develop ideas and create outcomes.

CIKF provides a developing research methodology for understanding what can happen within those encounters.

Together, they provide the foundation for Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Labs place-based programs that bring together communities, artists, researchers, cultural organisations, scientists, Traditional Owners and institutions to explore questions that matter to a particular place.

The process is cyclical

LISTEN → MAP → TRANSLATE → EXCHANGE → IMAGINE → MAKE → RETURN → RESPOND → CONTINUE

Participants contribute lived experience, memories, observations and creative responses. These are translated through artistic processes into sound, image, performance, objects, data, stories and other forms of creative knowledge. The resulting work is then returned to the public, where audiences can encounter it, respond and contribute new perspectives.

The knowledge does not end with the artwork. It continues through the people, conversations, relationships and new questions that the work generates.

CO-CREATIVE IMMERSIVE SHARED KNOWLEDGE LABS

The next evolution of Wunder Gym is the development of Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Labs: collaborative programs that use creative practice to investigate relationships between people, place and complex social, cultural and environmental questions.

A Lab might explore:

  • water and ecological change;

  • local histories and cultural memory;

  • climate futures;

  • community identity;

  • changing urban environments;

  • biodiversity and place;

  • migration and belonging;

  • public space;

  • intergenerational knowledge;

  • creative and cultural futures.

Each Lab is developed in response to its particular community and place.

The aim is not simply to produce an exhibition or artwork, but to create a living knowledge library in which creative practice enables different forms of knowledge to meet.

This can bring together:

COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE
↕
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
↕
SCIENTIFIC & RESEARCH KNOWLEDGE
↕
TRADITIONAL & CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
↕
INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE
↕
AUDIENCE RESPONSE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Many community programs ask people to participate.

Many consultation processes ask people to provide information.

Many exhibitions ask audiences to experience an outcome.

The Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Lab asks a different question:

What knowledge can we create together that might not emerge through any one discipline, institution or individual alone?

This creates an opportunity for arts and culture to operate not only as a means of expression or engagement, but as a method for generating, translating and sharing knowledge.

HOW WUNDER GYM + CIKF WORKS

Wunder Gym is the platform.

CIKF is the emerging research framework.

Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Labs are the program model.

The community is the co-producer.

The artwork is one expression of the knowledge generated.

The audience becomes part of the continuing cycle.

This relationship allows Wunder Gym to retain what has always made it distinctive, creative experimentation, mentorship, connection and making, while opening a new pathway into collaborative research, public art, environmental engagement and civic knowledge production.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

CIKF is currently being developed through Annette Wagner's practice-led research following her PhD in contemporary artistic practice and water ecologies. The framework is being further developed through creative practice, community programs, institutional partnerships and emerging research collaborations.

Future Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Labs will provide opportunities to test, document and refine the framework across different communities, places and contexts.

Explore a CIKF Program for Your Organisation

A Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Lab can be tailored to support an organisation’s existing priorities in community engagement, place-making, public art, artist development, environmental initiatives, audience development and cross-sector collaboration. By connecting community experience with creative practice, a CIKF program can generate meaningful participation, new creative outcomes and shared knowledge that may inform future programs, projects and strategic priorities.

The Lab can be adapted to the needs of different communities, places and organisations, with outcomes extending beyond the initial program through creative works, documentation, new relationships, audience engagement and an evolving body of shared knowledge.

Interested in exploring what a Co-Creative Immersive Shared Knowledge Lab could look like for your organisation or community?

GET IN TOUCH to discuss your priorities, place and the possibilities for developing a CIKF program together.