Marcus Westbury
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Marcus Westbury | |
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| Born | 1974 Australia |
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| Residence |  Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
Marcus Westbury (b. 1974) is an Australian festival director, writer and media maker. He is currently based in Melbourne, Australia where he created the three part TV series Not Quite Art for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation screened during October-November 2007.
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[edit] Biography
Westbury was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia on 17th January 1974. He attended Jesmond High School (now Callaghan College Senior Jesmond Campus) and University of Newcastle where he failed to complete a Communication Studies degree. During this period he was involved in student politics and was campus activities officer and co-editor with Sean Healy of the student newspaper OPUS in 1995. Under their direction, OPUS was one of the first Australian publications to publish regularly on the World Wide Web.
[edit] Arts and Festivals
In 1996 Westbury was a co-founder of the arts and media collective Octapod and the short-lived Newcastle Fringe Festival. This led to a position based in Sydney as the Online Manager of the LOUD media festival a landmark festival of media arts that took place across Australia's radio and television networks in January 1998. Westbury was subsequently the inaugural Creative Manager of the Noise Media Festival - a follow-up festival to LOUD.
Whilst working in Sydney between 1998 and 2002 Westbury was the founder and manager of the This Is Not Art festival in his home town of Newcastle, New South Wales.
In 2002 Westbury was appointed as the Artistic Director of Melbourne's Next Wave Festival [1] and was the Director of the 2004 and 2006 Next Wave Festivals under the themes of Unpopular Culture (2004) and Empire Games (2006). In 2006, Westbury was also a Director of Festival Melbourne 2006, the cultural program of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Marcus Westbury also founded and was one of the directors of Free Play, Australia's largest independent computer games developers' conference that took place in Melbourne in 2002 and 2003.
[edit] Media Projects
Westbury has worked across a range of media including as a commentator and producer for ABC Local Radio in Newcastle, Sydney and Melbourne and ABC Radio National and has featured on a range of ABC TV series including Recovery, Critical Mass and Vulture. As an occasionally published writer, Westbury is also a coauthor of the h2w2 guidebook (published by the Australia Council) and a tongue in cheek tourism guide to Newcastle called Newcastle Navigator.
[edit] Other
Westbury's mother Kaye Westbury was the Australian Democrats candidate for the Division of Newcastle in 1998 when she died on the eve of the election, forcing a postponement of the vote in the city.
[edit] Media Coverage
- Oliver, Robin. Not Quite Art, The Age Newspaper, 15th October 2007.
- Hill, Jason. Screen Play: Not Quite Art, The Age Newspaper, 2nd October 2007.
