The post-industrial city of Newcastle is reinventing itself as a centre for culture, art, music and crafts thanks to initiatives like Renew Newcastle.
First-time visitors to Newcastle are often shocked to discover that more than one third of shop fronts in the city’s Central Business District lie eerily abandoned.
According to property developers GPT Group, the decline of Newcastle’s CBD is consistent with many regional cities and towns, which have seen retailers, theatres and cinemas exit the city centre since the late 1960s as a result of suburbanisation.
Claire Williams, deputy chair of the Newcastle City Centre Committee, believes there are two challenges at play in Newcastle: it has not only lost its identity as a coal and steel producer since the closure of industrial plants in the late 1990s, but its CBD has lost its status as the region’s retail hub.
“Urban decay is a major problem in Newcastle. It is a city in transition, and a number of people are beginning to ask how we can move away from our industrial past to embrace a fresh identity,” says Williams.
Located 160 kilometres north of Sydney, Newcastle has a population of 141,752 people, according to the 2006 Census, with around 500,000 people living in the greater Lower Hunter region, for which Newcastle remains the regional hub.
Despite being the second most populated area in New South Wales, in 2007 more than 260 premises in Newcastle’s city centre lay vacant, and a number of local organisations realised something must be done to halt the decline.
One initiative that’s garnering global attention is Renew Newcastle, a pragmatic solution to the problem of unoccupied shop fronts that offers cheap, temporary tenancies to artists and aspiring young businesses.
“A few years ago you could have shot a cannon down the two main streets of the Newcastle CBD without hitting anyone. Today, property developers have publicly acknowledged Renew Newcastle for raising demand for commercial premises and bringing audiences back to the city,” says Marcus Westbury, a cultural project manager who initiated Renew Newcastle in early 2008.
Renew Newcastle negotiates rolling 30-day agreements with owners of neglected properties. For an administration fee of $20 per week, artists, designers, photographers and craftspeople are invited to set up temporary galleries, studios and offices in empty buildings. In exchange, they make small modifications to the appearance of rundown premises, while enticing people into the city to view their exhibitions and wares.
Since its inception, Renew Newcastle has placed 36 projects in 24 formerly empty buildings.
“Renew Newcastle incubates creative initiatives that may go on to become viable businesses. By bringing audiences back to the city, there are positive economic repercussions for existing CBD retailers and landlords. The project is also creating a new identity for the city of Newcastle because it’s receiving a lot of interest from elsewhere in the world,” says Westbury.
Renew Newcastle takes a bottom-up approach to influencing change. The project was initiated with little funding, and requires next to no overheads to run, which is why it has been praised as an idea that could be easily replicated in cities around the world.
“The whole point of Renew Newcastle is that it is cheap to run. The refinement of the idea has taken 10 years, but I made a conscious decision that there was no point waiting to get Renew Newcastle off the ground. If it worked, I felt the government and council would get behind it eventually, and if it didn’t, at least we tried,” says Westbury.
First, Westbury met with local businesses, council members, academics and property developers to garner community support. Next, he engaged a pro bono lawyer to make Renew Newcastle legally viable. Commercial leases are typically complicated and long-term, so Renew Newcastle devised property licenses that expire on a rolling 30-day basis, so its beneficiaries are exempt from the complexities of commercial lease contracts.
Start-up costs included public indemnity insurance at $3,000 per year, plus a company registration fee of $1,000. In 2009, Renew Newcastle secured its first public funding from the NSW Government, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle City Centre Committee.
“We’re delighted to support Renew Newcastle because it is increasing business activity in the CBD,” says Williams, explaining the Newcastle City Centre Committee’s decision to support Renew Newcastle via its Community Grants and Sponsorship Program in the 2009-10 financial year.
“Previously vacant shop fronts have been refurbished in a stylish way, and we are all looking at these places in a different light. As well as that, we’re very happy that some of these proprietors are establishing themselves independently as businesses. They’re learning to establish a market and hone their products on the ground. It’s very exciting,” she says.
In March 2009, university graduates Abby Farmer and Clare Gleeson established their design studio, Neon Zoo, in an old opthamologist’s clinic – a space they now share with five other businesses in an agreement brokered by Renew Newcastle.
“Having our own office makes us look a lot more professional to our clients, and we’ve acquired a referral network for new business through the people we share the space with,” says Farmer, who is 26 years old.
Committing to a three-year commercial lease is a daunting expense for a start-up design studio, says Farmer, so a 30-day rolling licence was a “lifesaver that has helped us build our business”.
Several other initiatives are beginning to reinvent Newcastle as a regional cultural hub.
Newcastle City Council introduced a five-year cultural framework titled ‘Our Wonderful Life’ (2005-2010), which aims to nurture Newcastle’s creative industries to create employment opportunities, promote diversity and community wellbeing, and generate cultural tourism.
GPT Group is seeking approval for a $650 million development to re-build the city centre as a retail and residential hub, incorporating affordable spaces and alleyways for boutique retailers, cafes and galleries, which will establish a point of difference to more generic suburban shopping districts outside the CBD.
Festivals such as This Is Not Art are also bringing audiences to Newcastle from other cities to enjoy the Crack Theatre Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Electrofringe, Critical Animals and Sound Summit, which take place concurrently every year.
“There have always been artistic events and festivals in Newcastle, but it’s great to see them play out in the centre of town. By challenging people’s expectations of art and creativity, This Is Not Art is also contributing to a new sense of identity. Historically, Newcastle has always been a blue collar coal and steel town, and being here on the brink of its emergence into something else is very exciting,” says Angelica Clunes, Festival Coordinator of This Is Not Art, which has been running since 1998, and was also founded by Westbury.
Clunes is confident that initiatives like Renew Newcastle and This Is Not Art are generating employment opportunities for young residents. “Art and culture encourage economic growth within cities, and I believe local government and corporations are beginning to understand the contribution that creative businesses make to the economy,” she says.
It’s a strategy that many post-industrial towns have also embraced with great success. In the UK, cities like Glasgow and Manchester have emerged as flourishing centres for creative experimentation following the decline of their industrial sectors.
Westbury admits there is no grand vision for Renew Newcastle. It is simply a low-cost, practical solution to the challenge of urban decay.
“From an economic development point of view, we have opened nearly 40 new initiatives that are bringing audiences to the city. In the short-term, hopefully the city centre will continue to come back to life. Long-term, we hope to change expectations of what Newcastle is about and what’s possible to do there. The projects may not last forever, but hopefully the sentiment will,” says Westbury.
