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Renew Newcastle creative arts project founder Marcus Westbury was named Newcastle's citizen of the year and leukaemia survivor and Cancer Council volunteer (and Newcastle Fashion Week organiser) Louise Mackay the young citizen of the year.
From The Galway Adertiser, Ireland:
"Vacant and disused buildings around Galway city should not be allowed to lie empty and idle. Instead they could be transformed into temporary art galleries and exhibition spaces... Projects such as Swing Space in New York, Britain’s the Caretaker Project, and Australia’s Renew Newcastle Project have won acclaim for transforming run down areas into thriving c...
Arts commentator Marcus Westbury was born in Newcastle in NSW, where the city's port is a gateway for the world's largest export of coal.
But over recent decades the Newcastle CBD has pretty much died. There are over 130 empty buildings in the two main streets of the city centre.
Now in his 30s, Marcus has returned to his hometown to try and revitalise the two main streets with a project called ...
AFTER years of depression and desperation about Newcastle's decay, one of the biggest stories of 2009 was an ambitious but simple plan to bring life back to the city.
Young and creative people have helped make the Renew Newcastle project the signature move to get the city thinking positive again.
The project has made news around Australia and the world, which makes Renew founder Marcus Westbury o...
Alex Thompson, of Hamilton, registered the name Surfhouse Photography when she was a 16-year-old as part of a long-range plan to be her own boss.
She worked odd jobs in restaurants, at Knights match days and at Subway to put herself through a diploma of photography course in Sydney.
Now 21, last week found her amid her collection of surfscapes applying the fi nishing touches to her...
It may well be the miracle on Hunter Street.
A minor one, but still a miracle.
Newcastle's main drag has a pulse. The business strip once declared dead is not as yet displaying a full set of vital signs, but there is a flicker of life and with that a sense of hope and renewal.
The unlikely hero of this possible resurrection is neither politician nor business leader but rather a self-confessed...
An interview with Renew Newcastle participant Heath Killen:
"His space is housed within a former surgery known as The Clinic, and while most of the surgical tools have been removed, he’s kept the odd accoutrement or two like the eye-chart letterbox in his room from which he took inspiration for The Clinic’s logo. His city is, in his eyes, “a place with so much potential but it just hasn’t been...
THIS is a column I was going to write this time last year.
What prompted me then to think about putting words to paper was an incident that occurred about 10am one weekday just before Christmas.
I had ducked out of work for 20 minutes to see my daughter's kindergarten class have their photograph taken with Santa at David Jones in town. There was, as you can imagine, much squealing and frivolity a...
NEWCASTLE Mall came alive last night for the first of a series of night markets.
As dusk settled over the city hundreds of people roamed through the Red Lantern night markets as the mall was illuminated with Christmas displays and street performers.
It was the first of three Friday night markets planned for December in the newly named Hunter Street Outlets precinct.
Christmas art installations...
NEWCASTLE Mall came alive last night for the first of a series of night markets.
As dusk settled over the city hundreds of people roamed through the Red Lantern night markets as the mall was illuminated with Christmas displays and street performers.
It was the first of three Friday night markets planned for December in the newly named Hunter Street Outlets precinct.
Christmas art installations...
