For any media and publicity enquiries please email: media@renewnewcastle.org
The recent Hunter Valley Research Foundation Lecture given by Renew Newcastle founder Marcus Westbury has unexpectedly garnered a lot of media attention around the world for its analysis and response to the problem of dysfunctional commercial property markets.
The discussion started was started by Justin Fox, the Economics Ediitor at TIME magazine. It was then picked up by Felix Salmon at Reute...
Renew Newcastle featured on last night's edition of Stateline, NSW. It's a great story on a project that according to host Quentin Dempster has "recycled, reinvigorated, revived, revitalised, recreated and reimagnied the city."
This video is hosted on facebook for embedding purposes. The original is actually here.
The Renew Newcastle project has featured on JJJ's current affairs program Hack this week:
Click to have a look and listen.
"Bird in the Hand is one of many spaces involved
in the Renew Newcastle project which is bringing life back to
Newcastle’s CBD by connecting artists and other cultural projects
with the owners of vacant or disused spaces."
Standing in Makespace, one of Newcastle’s most
colourful and eclectic new stores, it’s hard to imagine this was an
empty, ugly eyesore just six months ago. But this beast-to-beauty
makeover is being happily repeated throughout the CBD as part of a
project to breathe life back into the city centre.
Known as Renew Newcastle, the idea is simple: use derelict and abandoned shopfronts to house loc...
Floyd Tighe collected traditional Aboriginal art
for more than 20 years, not for its investment value but, because
it tells the history of his Aboriginal culture.
Never in those 20-or-so years had he ever consid-ered opening his own gallery but now Tighe is the proud operator of Newcastle’s first all-Aboriginal art gallery – Biami Mara.
Biami Mara, which means Creation Spirit in the tradition...
"Australian favela chic. Step one, creepy,
long-abandoned buildings; step two, free wifi"
From techno-pioneer and Wired Magazine blogger Bruce Sterling.
What becomes of a once-mighty centre of industry
when the businesses fail or move away, and the jobs evaporate?
In this era of industrial decline, it is a question being asked of many places around the world. In the former steel town of Newcastle, there were over a hundred vacant shops and offices on the main shopping strip. But, six months ago television presenter and writer, Marcus Westbury set...
By Harvey Grennan.
WHEN Marcus Westbury was a boy growing up in Newcastle, his grandmother would take him shopping in Hunter Street, then the thriving retail spine of the city.
Today Novocastrians do their shopping at mega-shopping malls sprinkled through the suburbs. There are more than 100 empty shops in the CBD and even the grand Victorian sandstone post office, once the proud centrepiece of NS...
Marcus Westbury is changing part of his
original home town of Newcastle from a dead zone of empty shops to
a vibrant precinct of artists, craftspeople, architects and
jewellers.
Listen to the audio here. The Renew Newcastle story starts half way through the program.
