About

Renew Newcastle is a not for profit company limited by guarantee. Renew Newcastle has been established to find short and medium term uses for buildings in Newcastle’s CBD that are currently vacant, disused, or awaiting redevelopment.

Renew Newcastle aims to find artists, cultural projects and community groups to use and maintain these buildings until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped. Renew Newcastle is not set up to manage long term uses, own properties or permanently develop sites but to generate activity in buildings until that future long term activity happens.

Renew Newcastle was founded to help solve the problem of Newcastle’s empty CBD. While the long term prospects for the redevelopment of Newcastle’s CBD are good, in the meantime many sites are boarded up, falling apart, vandalised or decaying because they are is no short term for use them and no one taking responsibility for them.

Renew Newcastle has been set up to clean up these buildings and get the city active and used again.

People

Marcus Westbury

Founder, Board Member

Marcus Westbury is a writer, broadcaster, festival director and media maker. Born in Newcastle, Marcus has long been obsessed with the problem of Newcastle’s decay and vacant buildings.

Marcus is the writer and presenter of the ABC TV series, Not Quite Art – the first series of which featured an extended look at Newcastle and Glasgow in Scotland and made a comparison that inspired the Renew Newcastle project.

When not making TV series, Marcus has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events. His interests range across media, culture, art, urban planning, sport and politics.

Marcus was a founder of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival. This Is Not Art is now Newcastle’s largest annual tourism event and one the largest media arts events in the world. From 2002 to 2006 Marcus was the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and was a director the Cultural Program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also co-founded Free Play, Australia’s largest independent computer games developer’s conference and was the inaugural Creative Manager of the youth media initiative Noise.

Marcus has co-written an arts guidebook for the Australia Council, a love-hate tourist guide to Newcastle and his writings have turned up in the Griffith REVIEW, Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Spinach7 magazine, several anthologies, journals, and countless web sites. He has sat on Committees of The Australia Council, Arts Victoria, NSW Ministry for the Arts, The Australian Film Commission and numerous agencies and was a delegate to the 2020 Summit Arts panel.

His personal web site is at www.marcuswesbury.net

Craig Allchin

Board Member

Craig Allchin is an architect and urban designer who has worked on the city across a range of scales. In the 1990’s he lived in the Melbourne city centre and worked with Six Degrees Architects on projects ranging from small bars to the revitalisation of the Walter Burley Griffin designed Capitol Theatre. He then moved to Sydney and spent four years travelling to China working on district and city masterplans, and since 2004 has worked on the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy, a 25 year plan to manage growth and change across all of metropolitan Sydney.

He remains a director of Six Degrees with whom he has recently completed The Fine Grain, a detailed study into ways to revitalise the Sydney City Centre.

Petra Hilsen

Board Member

Petra Hilsen was born in Germany and holds a Bachelor of Engineering. She has worked in the not for profit sector extensively in the field of child care, refugee services and building social capital.

Petra relocated to Newcastle in 2007 and works as a project officer for Infinitus Advisory – the organisation that has been appointed by the Newcastle City Council to manage projects determined by the Newcastle City Centre Committee in support of the revitalisation of the inner city.

Marni Jackson

Board Member, Secretary

Marni Jackson has wielded the safety pins, the spreadsheets, the gaffa tape and the handkerchiefs for a number of Newcastle-based creative projects.

Marni worked as the Festival Co-ordinator for This Is Not Art from 2005 – 2008, and has been involved as an organiser, committee member, editor, writer, costumier and performer in a number of Newcastle’s favourite creative and community collectives: Signor Piggy Wigg’s Morrow Park Arts Production House; The Lovelorn Living Party’s Bohemian Love Theatre; Urchin Magazine; Helen St Productions; Beanstalk Organic Food Co-op and Sustenance Food Co-op.

Marni completed a BA (Hons) First Class, at University of Newcastle in 2003.

In April 2009 Marni was appointed as the General Manager for Renew Newcastle.

Professor Dr Steffen Lehmann

Board Member

Professor Dr Steffen Lehmann is the Chair, Professor of Architectural Design at The University of Newcastle, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering. He is the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Urban Development for Asia and the Pacific Region.

More information about his projects can found at http://www.slab.com.au/

Peter Shinnick

Board Member

Peter Shinnick is the Chief Executive Officer of the Hunter Business Chamber, a position he has filled since January 2008. Prior to that Peter spent six years as the General Manager of the Hunter Valley Training Company, the largest private Group Training company in NSW with over 1400 employees and 100 staff.

Peter spent 24 years in the Royal Australian Air Force, completing three flying tours at 36 Squadron and his final appointment as the Commander of the Williamtown RAAF Base.

Peter has a number of qualifications including a Bachelor of Science, Graduate Diploma in Applied Science and a Master of Business Administration. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Rod Smith

Chairperson, Board Member

Rod is a lawyer in the Commercial Team at Sparke Helmore Lawyers. Rod’s legal career commenced in Sydney in 2001 as an in-house lawyer with brewer Lion Nathan and continued in 2003 as a litigator for the New South Wales State Government before joining Sparke Helmore in mid 2006.

In his professional capacity, Rod has provided legal advice on a pro-bono basis to Renew Newcastle since its inception under Sparke Helmore’s SHARE Program.

Rod also shares Renew Newcastle’s vision at a personal level. Having taken a career break in the beginning of 2005, Rod returned to Newcastle to co-found the Firekites collective with long-time friend, Tim McPhee. In 2006/7, Firekites co-wrote and recorded their debut LP, The Bowery, in the (then vacant) dance hall/bookstore of the same name located in Bolton Street.

Martin Matthews

Board Member

Martin has been a Partner at Forsythes since 2005 specialising in the provision of audit and risk management services. Martin was with Deloitte for thirteen years before starting with Forsythes.

Martin is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia and Institute of Internal Auditors of Australia.

Martin holds a B.Comm (Merit) from the University of New South Wales and is a Registered Company Auditor.

Since 2008 Martin has been assisting Renew Newcastle on a consultancy basis with its financial and accounting obligations.

Zac Zavos

Board Member

Zac Zavos, 35, is the Managing Director and co-founder of Newcastle based online company, Conversant Media.

Conversant Media publishes a number of websites including the pop culture website Lost At E Minor and the Australian sports opinion website, The Roar. Conversant also offers iPhone and content solution.

Prior to forming Conversant in 2007, Zac spend ten years in IT consulting with a number of firms including IBM, Deloitte, Fidelity Investments UK, and ThoughtWorks. His last role before starting Conversant Media was as Marketing Manager of start-up ThoughtWorks Studios, where he delivered the product sales channels, branding, business model and go to market path.

Zac has BA (Psych) and Master of Commerce (Information Systems & Management), both from the University of NSW.

Zac is a judge of the annual AIMIA awards and in 2009 was named one of Sydney’s Creative Catalysts by Vivid Sydney.

Zac moved to Newcastle in 2008.