marcus westbury

IN POLITE company in arts circles these days, you do not mention the “e” word. No, not e-books or e-commerce or the other electronic innovations running a wrecking ball through Australia’s much loved big-box retailers. The uncomfortable e-word in the arts is “elite”. The arts are in a bind when it comes to elitism. Once [...]

TECHNOLOGY is creating a strange paradox when it comes to art and culture. It’s expanding our options but narrowing our choices. It’s a phenomenon that has consequences far and away from the online world and one that is even threatening the business models and viability of some companies and art forms. Recently, the National Endowment [...]

  JUST before Easter, Arts Minister Simon Crean announced that advertising guru and philanthropist Harold Mitchell (pictured) would undertake a major review of private sector support for the arts in Australia. The review will look at the range of existing government programs and incentives for philanthropic support for the arts in Australia and abroad, such [...]

This article was written for the latest edition of the Dutch architecture/ design journal Volume… Let me put a scenario to you. Say you live in an aging, fading industrial town. One that has been on receiving end of repeated shocks from earthquakes and natural disasters to the closure of its largest industries and mass [...]

[I've been incredibly slack at updating the blog of late, i put it down to travel, parenthood, and general need-to-make-a-livingness. However, that does leave me with a bit of a backlog of old scribblings to post here over the coming weeks. The piece below was originally in The Age on the 31st of January and [...]

I am about to head off for 3 and a bit  weeks in the USA so updates may be sporadic for a while. In the meantime if you want to read something longer and chunkier of mine, the good folks at Meanjin have just put my essay Tiny Revolutions from the last issue online. It’s [...]

Why i moved to Melbourne I HAVE described myself on more than a few occasions as a cultural refugee from New South Wales. Many young artists and creative types – some very talented and some obviously less so – left the state during the Carr years. Some went overseas, some went north and played a [...]

Image from Gavin Anderson’s Flickr stream. Used under a creative commons license. Australia’s arts and culture scene is in the grip of a bike helmet problem. ARTS? Culture? Bike helmets? Let me backtrack a bit. Apparently the take-up rate for Melbourne’s casual bicycle sharing scheme has been uniquely woeful in the world. Bad. Dismal failure [...]

The Room Project, a Renew Newcastle installation I was recently asked to give a talk to the Victorian Association of Performing Arts Centres annual conference talking about how social media is changing the arts and i was specifically asked to use Renew Newcastle as an example. What follows is my notes from that talk – [...]

Hand made Nick Cave, by Lucy of Newcastle. MEMO to anyone tempted to frame a cultural debate as a choice between “high art” and “popular culture”: don’t bother; you are missing the point. It’s not just that the terms are frustratingly polarising or that they frame the world as a simple hierarchy of quality based [...]