When:  Thursday the 24th of May, 14.00 o’clock till 16.30h

It’s time to challenge some of our ideas a bit and for that Marcus Westbury will come for a visit. He has been doing quite some things over on the other side of earth so there is plenty for an interesting afternoon at Knowmads.

“Marcus Westbury is a writer, broadcaster, festival director and media maker. Born in Newcastle, Marcus has long been obsessed with the problem of Newcastle’s decay and vacant buildings.

Marcus is the writer and presenter of the ABC TV series, Not Quite Art – the first series of which featured an extended look at Newcastle and Glasgow in Scotland and made a comparison that inspired the Renew Newcastle project.

When not making TV series, Marcus has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events. His interests range across media, culture, art, urban planning, sport and politics.

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 the Cultural Program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also co-founded Free Play, Australia’s largest independent computer games developer’s conference and was the inaugural Creative Manager of the youth media initiative Noise.

Marcus has co-written an arts guidebook for the Australia Council, a love-hate tourist guide to Newcastle and his writings have turned up 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.

His personal web site is at www.marcuswesbury.net”
http://renewnewcastle.org/
http://nextwave.org.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/notquiteart/

See you at Knowmads!.