To keep Gap Filler’s famous Christchurch Pallet Pavilion for next summer the Gap Filler Trust need money to cover things their Pavilion’s building consent requires:

• Security (the pallets are deemed a fire hazard)
• Toilets
• Power
• Maintenance
• A summer venue manager

They are trying to fundraise $30 a pallet [there are 3,000 pallets]. This is a people power event venue – organised by the community like Newtown’s Festival – Please help spread the word.

Gap Filler’s Pallet Pavilion was built in late 2012 by 250+ volunteers using 3000 wooden pallets. It was conceived to respond to the loss of venues for live music and community events in post-quake Christchurch. An extremely ambitious project, it has been an incredible success. It has had amazing media coverage, too with features n Australian Geographic, Cuisine, the Daily Mail, the Weekend Australian and more.

More than 25 000 people have visited in just 5 months and it has hosted more than 100 events from live music to markets to children’s parties to lectures. 45 volunteers have contributed to it running across the Summer.

The Pavilion is a temporary project and its deconstruction was due to take place in May this year. So NOW in other words. But across March and April many people have asked if we can keep the Pavilion in the space for another year.

But Gap Filler can’t afford to keep it. So they’re putting it to you, their friends, fans, supporters and community to help raise the money needed and also spread the word.

If you would like to support the Pavilion please go to https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/1064and watch a beautiful little video about it.

This is Gapfillers public campaign where they are trying to raise $80 000. As well as the film, they’ve organised some special rewards for all those lovely people who can give to the campaign.

If you or your company might like to donate directly outside of the Pledge Me campaign sponsorship that helps save the Pallet Pavilion can be acknowledged  on the pallets. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Claire@gapfiller.org.nz

Gap Filler thank you for your support. Even if you can’t donate yourself, please share this with as many people as you can. The only way we can raise the money we need is through the community pulling together in a combined effort, much like the way in which it was built.

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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

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.

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

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.

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

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 February 1994

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.

FROM LAURA’S ARCHIVE:

November Quiz: What is happening in this 1904 photo

July Quiz: Where is the grand Newtown residence shown in this image from around 1910?  Bonus points if you know who lived there.

The correct answer is: The photo is 320 Mansfield Street, behind  in the background can be seen a house on Russell Terrace. Today this site is part of Newtown Park Flats. The ornate fence is all that remains of the Transport Manager’s House.  [ At the southern end of the Newtown Park Flats  complex,  before the entrance to Newtown Park ]

June Quiz: Guess the location & purpose of this chimney.

Yes I know we told you at the May meeting – but its such an amazing photo, especially when you click on it to enlarge it & see the people up it !

 The correct answer is: The Brick and Tile works at 291 Mansfield Street. Some of the remains of the kilns can still be seen down the  laneway at 291.

May Quiz: The location of this 1965 photo

 The correct answer is: John Street, with the Dairy being the north west corner of Countdown.