Awesome Newcastle August

Awesome Newcastle August


We thought we were back in the pub for good, but sadly this dang pandemic ain’t over yet, so Awesome Newcastle commenced digitally again last night! Videos were emailed, board members were organised, a meeting was zoomed and all of us celebrated the fact that Awesome Newcastle perseveres!

This month we welcomed four guest board members, three of whom are returning: Suzie Galway of

Hudson Street Hum, Rachael Heslop of Sage Coach and Simone Le Mesurier of The IV Lounge. We also have a first time guest board member joining us, Damon McDonald of the Awesome Book Club!

Also shout out to Emma Levine who is not a board member but always an Awesome Newcastle cheerleader. She joined us for the zoom call too!

This month we had three worthy finalists. We had Lara Lupish from Façon Australia who told us about The Face of Façon Model Search in conjunction with Newcastle-owned-and-produced fashion magazine Façon. This year due to COVID, the usual platform for the fashion runway activation has been forced to change tack. Their new idea is to hold a virtual runway finale that can be streamed across the whole world! The dollars would be put into the costs around the tech production equipment and rental of the studio that houses this equipment in Cardiff ( as well as some social media marketing).

Next we had Kerryn Tippit of The After Party who told us the heartbreaking story about losing her young daughter to a common virus. She had to plan her funeral but wanted to do things differently, celebrating the memories they had of her daughter. Kerryn has taken time to process her grief and now she wants to be able to help people do the same. Her new business is like a wedding planner but for funerals. Kerryn works with grieving families, sourcing quotes from funeral homes, listening to their ideas of how they want to say their goodbyes and making them a reality. She imagines funerals at the pub, or a bowling alley or on the beach with everyone having a surf. She would divide the money between Spotify, Facebook and Google campaigns as well a curating some additional content for website SEO.

Last but not least we had Joshua Barnett with From A Distance Sessions a free community broadcasting centre setup. They are working to save live performance and to help the music industry through the Covid crisis. They are a volunteer-based program who need a lot of hands on deck in order to facilitate such a large project. They want to help local bands reach their audience in their time of need and encourage the community to come together to help the music industry through this emergency. The bulk of the the money will go to buying more streaming devices so they are able to host the festival both on Facebook and Instagram.

It was a tough decision, but votes must be cast! We had a zoom call with some of our members to discuss and eventually it was determined that Josh and his FAD sessions should be the winner. Congratulations to Josh and his crew of awesome musos!

Thank you to our lovely finalists and please remember that applications never expire, so we might see you again at another Awesome Newcastle.

We hate that we aren’t able to do it in person much this year, but we are so happy that we have awesome supporters and ideas that are keeping Newy going through this tough time! If you would like to apply for money or to be a guest board member, please do so via our website! See you next time!