Newtown Residents Association

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Filed under: News

Don’t click on any links sent to you by our yahoo email

Somehow our email address has been compromised. Please delete any email sent to you from nrawgtn@yahoo.com.au

Newtown Residents’ Association now has a new email address newtownwellington@gmail.com

Filed under: News

Some of us think that we live in a bubble, and firmly believe it’s a couple of degrees warmer in Newtown than in the rest of Wellington, this week Local Illustrator Kelly Spencer was been able to represent that exact feeling in a clever image entitled, Welcome to Newtown.

“I just wanted to express what a wonderful home Newtown is..”, says Kelly,  “..and that I’m pleased to know it’s there waiting for my return.” 

Kelly has recently moved to the Sunshine Coast in Australia, is fast making a name for herself worldwide as an award winning literary Illustrator, painter, and graphic designer. The Newtown Festival was lucky enough to have Kelly work on the design and print newspaper layouts for the 2013 Fair, where she illustrated 7 festival “characters” representing each performance stage.

In 2012 Kelly was one of 6 artists sent to Auckland for the Redbull POPLIFE artist in residence programme, and in 2011 completed illustrations for award winning children’s book Taketakerau – The Millenium Tree.

Welcome to Newtown has been entered into a poster competition by hip design exhibition and lifestyle media gurus Semi-Permanent, who are bringing an exhibition to Auckland in May 2013.

Filed under: News

The Newtown Residents’ Association is upgrading how we web post news and send email updates.

Thanks to Andrew Leggott, James Coyle, Don Mackay and Martin Hanley we have just sent out our first new look email based Newtown Newsletter  - linked in tandem with stories here on the website

We have unified our email database and the Newsletter has been emailed to everyone who is an Association member and to everyone who had given us their email for receiving Newtown updates.

Please click here to become a subscriber to future Newtown Residents’ Association emails.

If you have an item of interest for the next Newsletter edition, or for this website, please email:  newtownwellington@gmail.com

Filed under: News

The 2011 Newtown Festival Street Fair was a week and a half after the devastating Christchurch Earthquake. So on Fairday that year with the help of Fire Service Volunteers we bucket collected donations from the crowd, with Westpac’s help we raffled signed Phoenix Shirts, and we also sold Newtown Festival Calendars.

After much deliberation, and research into Christchurch un-funded needs, the Newtown Festival Committee decided to use the $1520 raised to support Christchurch performance artists and events.

So far in 2011, 2012, and 2013 we have funded 12 Christchurch acts to come up and perform at the Newtown Festival (plus accommodation). Each of those 3 years we have also supported 2 or 3 technical crew members (who have flown in at their own expense) to assist in the Newtown Festival. www.newtownfestival.org.nz  Each year our general Festival funds have been sufficient to pay the acts to perform and those involved insisted on donating the accommodation. The acts, and the tech crew have all suggested we keep hold of the money and use the funds on someone more deserving!

Successfully hosting the first years ‘refugee’ artists and tech crew without spending any of the donated funds the Festival then pledged funding to Gap Filler initiatives to be staged in Christchurch that year. The Gap Filler Trust temporarily activates vacant sites within Christchurch with creative projects. www.gapfiller.org.nz

Gap Filler were delighted with this seed funding, but with them becoming more and more popular  with funding agencies, and with donors who liked their quirky projects they also didn’t need to use our funds, suggesting instead we made the money available for other artists who couldn’t gain funding. Our potential funding continued to underwrite Christchurch creative events in 2012 again without needing to be spent….. so in February 2013 Newtown Festival helped fund the launch performances staged for the fundraising album “Songs for Christchurch“. This launch included 2 Wellington bands who have played past Newtown Festivals.

www.songsforchristchurch.org  This compilation album is by a collective of people from Melbourne, San Francisco, Christchurch and Wellington, with tracks donated by twenty one local and global artists. The album is fundraising for community projects in the rebuild of Christchurch. This way the spend of some of our fundraising is a catalyst, helping to generate further funds.

Newtown Festival intends to maximise the effectiveness of the remaining donated moneys and will continue to underwrite performance initiatives that may or may not draw down on our funds….. Currently we are investigating supporting outdoor circus performance.

Filed under: News

7.30 at the Community Hall 71 Daniell Street, at the Constable Street playground

(opposite the Mediterranean Warehouse)

Come along and find out what’s going on

Filed under: News

The minutes of the April Public meeting of the Assoociation are available here.

Filed under: News

At the April meeting History Honours student Jessie Annett-Wood explained the Laura Rosier book archive and showed printed examples of the methods being used as she helps recover the archival material and formats it into a digitally editable form.

Laura Rosier spent the 1980’s and early 1990’s researching and compiling a history of Newtown, collating historical photographic material for a Newtown History book.  Laura had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the dates of photos and the dates of landmark structures that appear in them.

Laura and her husband Vaughan Rosier were active members of the Newtown Residents’ Association. Vaughan was the Newtown Residents’ Association treasurer for many years, and made grant applications for assisting the publishing the Newtown book.

Unfortunately with her book very nearly complete Laura Rosier died suddenly in 1993.

After Vaughan Rosier died in 1996 the book material was bequeathed to Martin Hanley and Anna Kemble Welch, neighbours and friends of Vaughan and Laura.

Preparing the final edits for publishing has been a long protracted process including nearly losing the material with an editor collaborator of Laura’s who suffered from progressively worsening dementia while working with the archive.

The very muddled archive material came back in 2012, and with Jessie and other university students help Martin and Anna have re-activated the publishing project.

The intention is to compile a digital copy ‘time capsule’ edition exactly as Laura Rosier intended.  With an additional supplementary digital edition that includes footnotes and annotations highlighting any areas of incompleteness, or where significant changes over the last 20 years make the written descriptions confusing.

Guess the location of this 1965 photo from Laura’s archive – the correct answer will be provided at the May meeting when Jessie Annett-Wood will give her next update on the collating & scanning progress.

Filed under: News

Wellington City Council is developing an Alcohol Management Strategy for the city. Input has been sought through meetings with community groups, the hospitality industry and via a series of community workshops.

Members participated in the WCC community workshop at St Annes Hall in March. As an organisation we have discussed the issues widely at many of our monthly meetings, and we advocated strongly over many years for our streets and parks becoming a Liquor Free Zone.

Key aspects of the Association’s latest submission to WCC were agreed at the April meeting.

Thanks to Peter Cooke, Tom Law and Bernard O’Shaughnessy for all their work collating the submission. You can read it here: ALCOHOL PLANNING POLICY- Newtown Submission_April13

And you can read the Mount Cook Mobilised submission here:   MCM_Alcohol_submission_Apr2013_FINAL

Filed under: News

By far the most important issue dealt with by the Association over the past year has been the impact of the major works around the John St / Riddiford St / Adelaide Road intersection on the Newtown business community, and in particular the retailers in the immediate area.

The Association’s draft paper draws some lessons from the John Street upgrade experience and makes recommendations to Wellington City Council that could help the council to more effectively manage the relationships with affected communities when undertaking similar large and ongoing public upgrade projects.

We accept the need for WCC to undertake such major works in the broader interest of the City.  However we believe that more attention could usefully be given to understanding, managing and mitigating the negative impacts that may arise for the neighbourhoods where these large scale works take place.

The main points in the paper were endorsed at the April members meeting.

A big thanks to the hard working volunteers who contributed to this, particularly Jeanie McCafferty.

Constructive and pro-actively attempting to make Wellington a better place: Newtown Works Draft Paper

Filed under: News

Quick Headlines from the March NRA meeting last night.

Alcohol Policy – Do not miss your chance to hear what is going on and have your say.   Public meeting in St Annes Hall on Thursday 21 March starting 7:00pm

John Street Works – At last the work is complete.  The NRA has decided to put together a paper to WCC setting out what it sees as the “lessons to be learnt” from this.

Basin Options – WCC  vote on the Basin Flyover is to take place Thursday.  Do not be shy about contacting councillors and letting them know what you think about this.

Newtown Festival – the meeting passed a vote of thanks to the Festival Committee for what had been a great event.

Community Survey/Vision Exercise – a subgroup was set up to look at options for carrying out a community survey of visioning exercise.

Super City?  – WCC is about to open a round of consultations on options for changes to the structure of local government in the region.

Newtown Ave Liquor Licence Application – this application has been withdrawn.  The meeting passed a vote of thanks to Anna Costley of the NCCC for mobilising local public opinion on this and the earlier Riddiford St application.

Filed under: News

As part of its process for developing an Alcohol Management Strategy, Wellington City Council is holding a Community workshop at St Annes Parish Hall Newtown on the evening of Thursday 21 March from 7:00-9:00pm.

This is your chance to get information about the process and input your views at an early stage in the process.

Filed under: News