Artists Working Over Time

Upon visiting the Renew Townsville sites this weekend we found Jamie, Jo, Jan and Katelyn hard at work on their spaces aiming for their respective launches this Friday night.

The following snapshots are only of Jo and Katelyn’s progress as we didn’t manage to cross paths with the ever dynamic Jamie due to his commitments with the Cotter’s Markets.  We will pin him  down and take some snaps early in the week to give you a glimpse at his progress.

Although the Friday night celebration is a “soft launch” it marks a significant point in the progress of the Renew project – and for the artists themselves, a moment to share their vision with the Townsville community.  It will surely be all hands on deck this week as they strive to go live by week’s end.

We will be circulating information regarding Friday night soon!

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Renew Townsville Logo

Our new logo package is now available for download.

If there are any groups associated with the Renew Townsville project who need to do their own marketing or promotional merch can you please use the following download logo variations :

Standard Print Version (PDF @ 2MB)

Large Format Print Version (EPS @ 32MB)

Large Web Version (JPEG @ 2MB)

Small Web Version (JPEG @ 80K)

Alternatively, if you would like to use this on the web, simply copy and paste the following web version :

Renew Townsville (PNG Version)

Help Needed : Working Bee

We urgently need volunteers to help the artists and the Renew Townsville team to clean, scrub, strip, rip, dump and turf rubbish and old signage and advertising collateral from the windows and shopfronts along our passage of the Flinders Street Mall.

This will be happening from 9am on Sunday 12th December.  We will be meeting outside the old Rivers store.

If you would like to participate in this noble enterprise we need you to come on down next Sunday and bring along the following :

*  A big smile
*  Gloves
*  Closed footwear

We also desperately need window cleaning equipment including blades and scrapers to remove paint and stickers.  Of course anything else you think might be helpful, such as your favourite cordless tools, cleaning products, brooms, mops , extension cords, and vacuums.

If you know a tradie or someone who can swing a hammer or flick a paint brush please bribe them on our behalf.  The more the merrier.

So if you have a spare few hours next Sunday morning please come along, we will be cooking up a sausage sizzle and will provide cold water to keep you fed and lubricated.

Please pop over to our contacts page if you would like to talk to Donna or Mitch about what’s needed and how you can help.

Taking back the world: one mall at a time

Can shopping malls abandoned by time and left to rot by commercial failure or the march of time be revitalised as centres for urban farming and ecologically sustainable communities?  There seems to be plenty of evidence that this is indeed a possibility and numerous projects across North America are doing just that.  Douglas Rushkoff blogs about it here :

“The failure and abandonment of shopping malls throughout the country has a bright side: smart communities and businesses are turning them into greenhouses for organic agriculture. Talk about a nice urban hack. (Hack, as in its original sense of retooling something for a better purpose.)

If this is the way the post-apocalypse looks, count me in.”

The full story, Future Farmers of the Mall by Katie McCaskey, appears at Spectre.

Some interesting :

Dead Malls – a site which documents the malls which are either shut or in the process of being shut across the United States;

Gardens Under Glass – a feel good story about a slowly dying mall in Cleveland Ohio which is being rejuvenated with an urban farm initiative high in its ostentatious 1980s glass interior;

Core77 – has a story on The Los Angeles Forum’s Dead Malls Competition, which calls for the redesign of “at risk” American shopping malls. “With malls as such major parts of the North American landscape, the competition is very forward looking and optimistic about a more efficient use of space.”

Another Retail Expedition …

Donna, Jamie & Katelyn

With Donna, Mitch and Dave taking possession of the keys from Lancini corp this week and confidence at an all time high the Renew Townsville team took a peek further into Townsville’s dormant retail underbelly.

What they discovered was that some of the spaces earmarked for projects are in dire  need of considerable tender loving care – and perhaps a shovel and an axe.

Much work is needed to make these spaces ready for artists and/or the collectives who have expressed an interest in the project and are priming themselves for the next round of proposals.

With Katelyn, Jo and Jamie beginning work this weekend we hope that some community spirit might help us take the next step and prepare another suite of spaces for the second wave of projects in the new year.

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We Have the Keys to (a corner of) the City

The keys!!!

Renew Townsville took delivery of the keys today from Lancini corp.  This enabled us to fully appraise the spaces and start the cleaning and preparation phase of the project.

This is incredibly exciting as we are so much closer to making that final step and signing off the leases on the spaces to the artists.

In the meantime we would like to thank the Townsville City Council for stepping into what seemed like an insurmountable breach and helping us make the spaces electrically safe by sponsoring a sparky, Rodney Dowd from Len Dowd & Co, to carry out some much needed repairs.

This will enable the first round of artists to gain access to the spaces and begin their renovations and beautifications over the coming weeks.

Our first Site Inspection with the artists

On Saturday morning we had the great pleasure of finally getting our hands on the keys to the first release spaces.  Although the lease is yet to be finalised, we were able to have a glimpse of the spaces now that the public liability insurance had been settled the day before.

Artists Jo Lancaster, Katelyn Aslett, Jamie Thompsoin (Organi-Gallery), Townsville Writers & Publishing Centre’s Carla Hutchinson-Reade and some representatives from theARgoT Collective (including Bernadette Boscacci & Michelle Hall)  and the EtCetera crew (including Robert Crispe, Elly Murrell, James Ellis, Kyana Pike and Jess Hay) were given a tour of the spaces with Donna and Mitch.

All agreed that much work needed to be done to get the spaces up to scratch yet there was a real sense of excitement among the group for what could be achieved.  There is still some way to go – the tenancy agreement needs final approval, electricity inspections and repair work needs to be carried out and fire safety equipment installed – yet the expectation is that the design and fit-out of the spaces would commence in a matter of weeks.

We will keep you posted as to when the keys are officially in our hands and the hard work can truly commence!

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