The Cultural Association WoWiWo a.k.a. WorldWide Words was founded in 2009 as a multi-arts platform for artistic activities with clear social and cultural perspectives. Our work is local, regional, national and international.

WoWiWo is based in the university city of Roskilde, close to the Danish capital Copenhagen. The association consists of a strong mix of young volunteers and socially engaged artists who are all passionate about words and the arts - including spoken, written and digital words, performance poetry, sms haiku and short stories on mobile phones and much more.

Equally importantly for WoWiWo is our interest in developing an understanding of the arena where these word art forms can meet with other artistic disciplines – for example rap, street art, video/film and digital art. We are also passionate about exploring not only how, but where we work. This has lead us to work in many unusual areas – from tunnels to caravans, street corners, cyberspaces, peoples apartments and asylum centres, hospital rooftops and many other unusual spaces!

World Wide Words are also deeply concerned with “letting hidden voices speak”, as well as training the artistic talent and strengthening the social capacity of young people.

We believe that working with words as an art form can help children and young people develop and understand their rights and obligations in relation to participation and development, and that learning to use their voices helps to improve overall life quality and strengthens self-esteem and self-confidence.

Recent activities include:

1. WoWiWo Works 2012. A word- exchange project for young people from across the region Sjælland/ Roskilde and young refugees from the Red Cross Centre, Avnstrup - with a final mini - festival in Roskilde for all workshop participants.

2. Bare Feet 2013. Burning Baobab. A collaborative project between Barefeet Theatre and WoWiWo . The project was created in Lusaka and presented in Denmark as part of the Danish Centre for Culture and Development Youth Programme 2013 (the cultural department of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

3. Art@Work. A 2 year pilot-project (20124/2015) funded by the Danish Immigration Service using the arts and artists in the facilitation of meetings between asylum seekers and Danish society.

4. Landai Project 2014. A collaborative project between WoWiWo and poets from Mirman Baheer (Womens Wave) Poetry Association, Kabul, Afghanistan. The project involved six poets and writers from UK, DK, Zambia and Afghanistan and was part of the Danish Centre for Culture and Development Youth Programme 2014.

5. Danish International Visiting Artist residency (3 months) autumn 2014 with performer and choreographer Mercy Kambulu from Barefeet Theatre , Zambia.

6. The Art@Work Project second stage - 2016/2017. See more about the project above.

7. Danish International Visiting Artist Zukiswa Wanner visited us in Roskilde/Denmark for 3 months in the autumn 2016.

8. The Caravan Project - an interactive multi arts project with 8 international artists co-creating stories in Roskilde with the title "Shared Futures" will take place in the spring 2017.

9. The international performance project "Crime of Silence" based on the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal held in Roskilde in 1967. See more via our Facebook updates. The performance will take place in autumn 2017/spring 2018.

10. 100% Foreign - international exhibition in Roskilde's public spaces with stories of refugees coming to Denmark over the last 70 years. Produced with KIT and supported by Nordea Fund, Danish Arts Council and Roskilde Kommune

10. Yes/No Exhibition - East/West post-second world war 2 stories of collaboration. Produced in 2018 together with Postbellum (CZ), with EU support.

11. Crime of Silence Symposium held at Byens Hus in 2018 with international contributors and produced together with Connie Minami from Kobe University (Japan).

12. Lysfest 2018 - WoWiWo were responsible for the final event with three large Burning Words installations created by young people from Roskilde in cooperation with WoWiWo artists. Supported by Roskilde Municipality.

13. SULA 2018/2019 - development work on a major Scottish/ Scandinavian exchange and development project started with the support of the Nordic Culture Fund.

14. Krydsfelt Festival - WoWiWi took part in the brand-new Krydsfelt (Crossfire) Festival in 2019 with an augmented reality poetry project.

15. WoWiWo were proud to have been instrumental in bringing the amazing WorldWideWords YouthWing - aka WoWiWo YoWi - to the world. In 2019 the YoWi's independantly ran a number of excellent workshops and exciting installations.

16. Lysfest 2020 - once again WoWiWo participated in the annual light festivla. This year creating a sculpture/sound/text installation in collaboration with the Tenbirdsontheroof Artists Collective.

2020: In the challenging Covid year 2020 WoWiWo went online in the spring with regular online storytelling sessions, as well as in the summer/late summer running a very succesful series of live face-to-face Augmented Reality workshops for young people (375 participants) both in the centre of Roskilde (Byens Hus) and in a more rural area just outside Roskilde (Skt. Hans Have). When society locked down again in the autumn these workshops successfully went online. Thes projects were funded by the Danish Arts Council and Roskilde Municipality.

2021. Despite (again) a lock down situation as we entered the new year, WoWiWo are looking forward later in the year to the next phase of our augmented reality word-work sessions for young people (with continued funding from the Danish Arts Council), and to a wealth of new local and global word actions.

See more on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldwidewords

The Cultural Association (Kulturforeningen) WoWoWo (WordWideWords) is registered as not-for-profit organization with the Danish Companies Register.