Who is Marcus?
Marcus Westbury is a broadcaster, writer, media maker and festival director who has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events. He has also worked across a range of media and events as a writer, producer, director and presenter covering fields as diverse as culture, art, media, urban planning, sport and politics.
Currently Marcus is the writer and presenter of Not Quite Art on ABC1. Over two three part series Not Quite Art has variously been described as “the kick up the arse Australia’s TV arts needed” (Arts Hub), “the freshest, most illuminating, thoughtful and funny locally made arts program in years” (The Age), the “Best Arts Show of the Year” (SMH), “a delightful, witty and above all intelligent journey” (Stilgherian blog) and proof “that in the right hands and with a well thought-out brief, coverage of the arts can be arresting, provocative and relevant” (The Age). He has also appeared as panelist on ABC TV programs including QandA, Vulture, Critical Mass and Recovery.
Marcus has also appeared in regular segments on ABC Local radio. This has included hosting and co-hosting programs on 1233 ABC Newcastle and 774 ABC Melbourne and doing regular segments such as finding an AFL team to support by going to games with fans of all 16 clubs or taking on Olympic athletes at 8 Olympic sports. In the past he has also had regular roles on ABC 702 Sydney (as a culture and technology commentator) and has appeared often on Local Radio, Radio National and Triple J.
Marcus has worked on a range of pioneering projects in online media. In 2007 he created and project managed the howshouldivote.com.au website with GetUp! and Yahoo7 – the site produced personalised how to vote cards for 150,000 Australians (or more than one percent of the total electorate) in the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election. In the past he worked as a project manager for ABC Online and Radio National, developing the online models of forums, interactive programming and audio downloads that are now common on that network and in the 1990s he was the manager of the Australia Council’s LOUD and Noise media festivals responsible for projects described by The Sydney Morning Herald as “as good as anything achieved on the web in Australia, and probably better.”
As a festival director Marcus was a founder of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival. This Is Not Art is now Newcastle’s largest annual tourism event and one the largest media arts events in the world. From 2002 to 2006 Marcus was the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and was a director of Festival Melbourne 2006, the Cultural Program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also co-founded Free Play, Australia’s largest independent computer games developers conference.
Marcus is a fellow of The Centre for Policy Development (a public interest think tank dedicated to promoting alternative voices in Australia’s public debate), and has co-written an arts guidebook for the Australia Council, a love-hate tourist guide to Newcastle and his writing about media, culture and politics has been published in Griffith REVIEW, Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Spinach7 magazine, several anthologies, journals, and countless web sites. He has sat on Committees of The Australia Council, Arts Victoria, NSW Ministry for the Arts, The Australian Film Commission and numerous agencies and was a delegate to the 2020 Summit Arts panel.
He is currently based in Melbourne where he is often unemployed.