Marcus Westbury
Founder, Renew Newcastle / Renew Australia
Marcus Westbury has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events; as founder of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival, one the largest media arts events in the world, Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival, director the Cultural Program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, co-founder of Free Play, Australia’s largest independent computer games developer’s conference and the inaugural Creative Manager of the youth media initiative Noise.
Born in Newcastle, Marcus has long been obsessed with the problem of Newcastle’s decay and vacant buildings. Marcus wrote and produced ABC TV series, Not Quite Art, which inspired the Renew Newcastle project. Marcus has co-written an arts guidebook for the Australia Council, a love-hate tourist guide to Newcastle and his writings have appeared in the 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.
t: @unsungsongs