marcus westbury

Recently i had a chance to do a talk about Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia to some staff of the Department of Planning and Community Development in Victoria. They filmed it and it turns out they posted in on YouTube. It’s one of the better captures of a talk i’ve done recently. [At this point it's [...]

Thanks, most unexpectedly, to the lovely folks at Virgin Australia who are giving me a Free Trip to New York (i won a competition, would you believe it?) i will be heading state-side again early in the new year. I’m keen to meet with and talk cities, urbanism and geekery with audiences of artists, architects, urbanists, [...]

Just when i thought that my short lived TV career had gone to the great archive in the sky the fairfax web site currently has both series of Not Quite Art available on live streaming I’m not exactly sure how or why, but i’m not complaining. Unfortunately there is no function to embed them and [...]

  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 [...]

For more action of me doing crazy hand gestures check out these highlights from the recent User generated cities forum held in Adelaide. The other speakers in this session were Teresa Crea, Tim Horton, John McTernan and John Wardle of ‘buy John Wardle a beer day‘ fame who i managed to buy a belated beer [...]

Back in February, i headed over to the US and Canada for 3 weeks of meetings, touring and a small amount of tourism. One of the highlights was the opportunity to make my Broadway debut (that’s literally where the office is) at Project for Public Spaces in New York to talk about Renew Newcastle and [...]

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 [...]

On the off chance there are any Canadians reading this blog or following my twitter feed, just a quick heads up that i will be in Toronto between the 12th and 17th of June. My main reason is to be a keynote speaker on the 14th at Canada’s 3rd Transforming and Revitalizing Downtowns Summit. Obviously i will [...]

MakeSpace – a Renew Newcastle project I’m on the road for about a month in the USA and Canada and meeting a lot of people who are interested in Renew Newcastle but don’t know too much about me, Newcastle, the project or its history. I thought i should try my best to put a few [...]

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 [...]