Newtown Community Centre needs you!

The Newtown Community Centre is all about all things Newtown! As well as hiring venues to the community (7 different spaces including a community theatre), we run a range of activities/initiatives such as…

• Newtown Tool Library (it’s just what it sounds like, a library for tools! www.newtown-tool-library.com)

• Free soup Fridays (eating noms together & connecting community) & a free hangout space for tea and coffee

• Wash against Waste (keeping your events/parties/dinners waste free)

• Programmes for youth (with a cheap as chips school holiday programme)

• Artist in Residence programme (check out Mire on insta @mira_a_mire)

• Smart Newtown (free internet access and computer classes www.smartnewtown.org.nz)

• Wellington Timebank - a community of people who share their skills for time instead of money (www.wellingtontimebank.org.nz)

• $2 exercise classes

• The Newtown News, our lil community zine by Newtowners for Newtown

• And heapppps more!

We’re pretty stoked that our main community space, on the corner of Colombo & Rintoul Streets, is getting a big ol’ upgrade! The project is funded for $3.4million bucks by the Wellington City Council (thanks, WCC!) but this is for the bricks and mortar, so while we’re gonna have a flash community centre in March 2022, we really need your help to put some stuff in it!! The new community centre has been planned with the community in mind and through consultation, and will be much more fit for purpose - with a lift to the upstairs so everything is accessible, a community theatre fit for gigs, theatre shows and community events, a ‘messy room’ where art stuff can happen, and lots more.

So if you’ve had a party here, come to a community event, watched a theatre show, been to a gig, learned something at a workshop, eaten some free soup, done your downward facing dog for a mere $2, like our kaupapa or would like to use the centre in the future, PLEASE chuck a few bucks in! We’re going to be applying for grants, but it would mean a lot to get our community’s support as well.

Any money we raise will go towards things like:

- Lights, sound gear, a projector and curtains for our community theatre, without these it’s a just a hall with a stage and an empty lighting box!

- New chairs - ours are falling apart and aren’t worth the money it’ll take to keep them in storage!

- New tables (we don’t have enough for the re-designed space as there are now more rooms to fill)

- Couches for our new bright, light drop-in centre, where peeps can come, hangout and have a free cuppa.

We’ve lost loads of income (cheers, global pandemic!) and will continue to lose income as we’re closed for a year, making it pretty hard to be able to rustle this stuff up. This might not seem like the most exciting fundraiser ever, but our centre supports a lot of other charities, local community groups and local people and we need to be resourced to be able to do that properly!

- We want that punk-rock fundraiser gig for Rape Crisis to have a basic PA system to use.

- We want those local artists to put on that koha entry shadow puppet show for Newtown kids to have basic stage lights they can use.

- We want that not-for-profit group to be able to put on a fundraiser movie night without having to hire a projector and separate projector screen.

- We want the community dinner where all locals gather to enjoy sitting on some sturdy chairs that stack out of the way when community yoga is happening!

We want to keep our spaces affordable to our hirers – so we need ya help!

Give us some love on Facebook (bit.ly/2RVzqHl) or if you’re a Newtown local sign up to our fortnightly newsletter to get the goss on what’s on (bit.ly/whats-on-newtown). You can check out more about the renovations here: bit.ly/OurTownNewtown