We've been busy behind the scenes at Renew Newcastle. Having successfully opened our first group of projects in February, we've been working behind the scenes to place a whole new group of creative initiatives in more of Newcastle's vacant buildings.
In May expect to see a whole new suite of active shopfronts, stores and studios opening. These buildings and others will be transformed into artist studios and galleries, milliners, clothes designers, a surf photographer and a shop for furniture, bags and other items made entirely from recycled materials.
Renew Newcastle has attracted a lot of attention for our innovative use of the web, social networking and "crowdsourcing" to develop ideas and involve the community in the development of the project. We have had a facebook group and a web presence long before we had a project, an organisation or any empty shops. The American web site Cooltown studios recently wrote about our use of facebook and we've been featured in places as far apart as Japan and Catalonia in Spain as the result of our online activities.
Today we think we've achieved our most significant internet milestone of all! The Renew Newcastle Facebook group has officially clocked over to the Newcastle postcode. We have 2300 members supporting renewing Newcastle 2300 and growing by the day. Given the size of Newcastle we think that's pretty impressive.
Renew Newcastle has been the subject of a major story on 1233 ABC Newcastle:
For visitors to the Hunter Street Mall for many years there have been increasingly fewer reasons to go there, as many stores pulled down the shutters and migrated to the bigger suburban centres.
What the Newcastle CBD needs, business advocates have said, is a specialty retail experience that compliments the city's natural assets - open air shopping, the beaches and the harbour.
Now, ironically, it looks like being the glut of vacant shops that could turn out to be the saviour of the run down shopping precinct.
Tim Neve is an editorial stylist and the publisher of "shop local" titles such as The Junction and Darby who has moved into on one of the empty studio spaces in The Clinic on King Street. Tim's before and after photos show how drab, uninspiring and unutilised space can be transformed with a little of the low budget passion, style and sweat equity that Renew Newcastle is bringing to the city.
The Clinic is a former optometrist clinic that now houses young design-based businesses. The maze of 'patient' rooms have been divided into separate offices and are each being given a new lease of life by their new occupants. While most of our more obvious projects are in shopfronts, The Clinic is a studio space where Renew Newcastle has brought like-minded creative people together.
If you want to see the space for yourself stay tuned for more Renew Newcastle site tours or even hire Tim or one of the tenants of The Clinic for your future project.
Makespace is now open on the corner of Morgan St and the Mall in what once was a shoe shop. It's a a small co-operative workshop and artisan store. The front of the space features a range of hand-made products from five makers, both functional and decorative. At the back of the shop on public view will be five artisan studio spaces used to produce the goods.
WIRELESS broadband internet will be offered for free in the Hunter Street Mall in an initiative designed to attract visitors to the area.
Not-for-profit company Renew Newcastle, which was established late last year to find short- and medium-term uses for vacant inner-city buildings, is working on the project with hosting company Ipera.
They expect to have wireless internet available in the next month.
Renew Newcastle board secretary Marni Jackson said the service would help creative arts projects in mall shop fronts, which would otherwise face great expense to install broadband.
It is hoped the free technology will also encourage visitors and shoppers to frequent the mall, which has struggled to attract business and tenants in recent years.
"If you're there at lunch with your laptop and want to send an email, it will be usable," Ms Jackson said.
"We thought providing the WiFi [internet network] was another attraction for people to use this place and use the area."
It follows the introduction in July 2007 of free wireless broadband internet at Beaumont Street, Hamilton.
Suzie Bailey and Jackie Smallcombe said they would connect a laptop to the service to help in running their handmade clothing and jewellery outlet Make Space, a Renew Newcastle project opening soon in the mall.
We have working bees on to install everything at the moment and are in the process of testing the new system. Stay tuned for the flicck of the big switch!
In a situation that may soon confront many Australian city centers, Newcastle has over a hundred vacant buildings in its two main streets. “Renew Newcastle” is an initiative to rejuvenate the centre of town, not by throwing millions of dollars at it, but by finding creative short- and medium- term uses for vacant shops and offices. This is allowing community groups and cultural projects to move in to otherwise wasted space.
Renew Newcastle will be opened with a launch event at our headquarters in the former Catholic Church at 3 Morgan St Newcastle this saturday 21st of February at 11AM. It will be followed by a tour of the projects led by Renew Newcastle founder, some time ABC TV presenter, and This Is Not Art festival founder Marcus Westbury.
The first seven projects are all taking place in and around Newcastle's Hunter Street Mall. They are the first of dozens of empty shopfronts, offices and sites around the Newcastle CBD that will be brought back to life under the scheme.
The first projects include a new photography gallery, a sound digital and media gallery, an animation studio/production house, a shopfront for children's art and craft classes, an architecture based installation exhibition, an online magazine and design hub, and a shop that will be home to artworks, origami and custom made creatures.
If you are from out of town come up to Newcastle for the day,spend the afternoon hanging out or at the beach and come back in the evening for several exhibition openings!
The Renew Newcastle web site now features a fantastic interactive map with project profiles in our newly enhanced 
