marcus westbury

If you were are all convinced that this site would be reserved for serious discussion of arts, cultural policy, the state of the nation and the odd tale of a bizarre night at the logies. Think again!
For the 8 weeks leading up to the Olympics i will be doing a regular spot on 774 ABC […]

I’m off to Canberra this morning.
I had the best of intentions of replying in detail to a lot of the ideas and comments that have been raised over the last few days. But the sheer rate and volume of contributions have made that impossible. I’ve read everything i can get my hands on and am […]

If anyone is interested, we will be talking 2020 summit and the future directions of Australian art and cultural policy type stuff on Radio National’s Australia Talks tonight at 6pm (EST). I’ll apparently be joined by fellow summiteers Robyn Archer, and Trevor Green from the MSO. If people want to be part of the discussion, […]

What is the difference between a 1920s and a 2020 summit?
It’s not a joke. It’s the question that I have been mulling over since my last minute call up to the “Towards a creative Australia” stream of the 2020 summit next weekend. The seeming disparity between the stated goals and the mix of […]

[Yes, somewhere inside me is a frustrated headline writer just busting to get out.]

I have to thank Ben Eltham and the comments over at Larvatus Prodeo and Christian McCrea for drawing this to my attention. Despite the fact that one of the agenda items for next weekend’s 2020 Summit is explicitly “How to encourage […]

One of those strange days.
Until early this afternoon I was not one of the people attending next weekend’s 2020 summit in Canberra. I took a 3 week writing sabbatical back in early March and dropped mostly out of communication with the world. When i came back to civilisation i discovered that the nomination process for […]

Just how big would the solar system be if you mapped it to scale on the surface of the earth?

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Click on the thumbtacks for planet names and sizes.
The map above was put together after a few too many drinks last new year’s eve. One discussion led to another and before we knew […]

A new series, Culture Shock, is in the early stages for ABC TV (Australia). All going to plan (which these things rarely do in my limited experience) we should begin filming around around July and the series should air in about October 2008. Yes, I already know that the title is a bad cliché […]