Breaking and entering with Wanderlust Projects

Wanderlust Projects is a design collaboration who make intimate experiences in unusual places. So unusual, in fact, that if you are attending one of their events it's more likely than not that you are trespassing and are at your own risk of being arrested. To date, they have held events in:

- abandoned factories
- observation decks
-a 70's honeymoon resort
- a luxury hotel
- subway tunnels
- an island
- and they ran a bar in a water tower for 2 months...

The two founders of the company, Ida C. Benedetto and N.D. Austin, comment on the line they walk taking risks in order to audiences' insatiable appetites for new and unique experiences.

Says Austin: "Our lives are full of boundaries.. any time you cross those, the transgression of doing something you're not supposed to be doing heightens all of your senses, and you are experience everything much faster and more intensely than you normally would".

And Ida reflects on the risk involved in their innovative business model: "Companies take risks all the time but it's for the sake of profit, not for the sake of discovery, or or bringing value into the world". 

Ida again on the relationship between experience and learning: "Exploring the Domino sugar refinery helped us understand how manufacturing has changed. Understanding that through actually encountering the defunct machinery is thrilling. And that visceral understanding is what we're going for in all of our events. When you feel it, when you live it, you don't forget it".

These comments about risk certainly ring true for anyone who has tried to organise an outdoor or small event in Sydney that's an alternative to the big festival-style annual events in Sydney, often at their own risk. The importance of a visceral experience in learning as well as behaviour change is something we at Wildwon focussed in on when organising the Ride On Lunch and Reel Food Nights for the Youth Food Movement, as well as engaging people with history and historical properties on the Eat Your History series for Sydney Living Museums.

Ida C. Benedetto and N.D. Austin speak about 'transgressive place making through adventure and intimacy' in a video created as part of Fast Company's 'Innovation Agents' series.