A Guide to Newcastle’s This is Not Art Festival

The Great Northern Hotel is transformed for the 5 days of TiNA into the Festival Club. Highlights include Thursday nights Opening Night celebration where you can enjoy a beer or wine and help celebrate the opening of TiNA for 2001. Friday's Electrobinge will also be a popular event with the showcase aiming to use audio-visual performance to both challenge and pleasure your palate. But the big event at the Festival Club takes place on Saturday night with the Big Top Ball. A night of hilarity is guaranteed with Sydney's Shanghai and Brisbane based Toby Gifford part of the entertainment line-up for the night.

One of the city's top arts venues, The Lock Up is once again a venue for TiNA 2011. Some of the top events at The Lock Up include Thursday's Under The Petticoats, a performance that unravels the awkard elegence and intricacies of the women as well as Sunday's The Landcape of Crisis, which focuses on artists engagement with both natural and environmental disaster areas.

Aside from the interesting name, The Crack House is offering some fascinating events during TiNA. Each day at 3pm will see the Daily Discourse, an event that allows festival goers the chance to discuss some of their favourite events as well as giving them the opportunity to share personal stories. Saturday sees Songbirds, a wind activated electro-acoustic display where artist Joe Mariglio performs with some interesting sounding sculptures. This starts at 10am. Finally, Sunday will see a workshop beginning at 1pm entitled How To Write Plays, funnily enough that is all about writing plays.

Staple Manor, located at Baggas Pharmacy is another exciting venue apart of TiNA 2011. Two exhibitions at Staple Manor look to be a couple of the more interesting events at the Festival. Running over the five days, Student Media Covered: A Retrospective is a mash up of favourite magazine and newspaper covers aimed to provide a visual fest. The Shape of Language is an exhibition of typographic art that showcases some of Australia's top artists and allows attendees to see just how they shape their words together. Both open at 9.30pm on Thursday.

A major supporter of TiNA, Renew Newcastle is giving up its Morgan Street space as part of the Festival for 2011. Thursday begins with a workshop and demo put on by improvisation/acoustic group, Peon. The other highlight for the five days at Renew comes on Sunday when Ollie Bown and Sam Britton present An Album In 1,000 Variations. The hour long presentation begins at 5pm and focuses on the pleasures and perils of composing parametric music.

The Loft is holding a couple of excellent events for TiNA. Head along on Friday at 10.30am for the Ever After Theatre Workshop. Australia's longest running experimental theatre group, Ever After will both perform and also give a few pointers to any aspiring actors. 12pm on Sunday will see the Freshly Squeezed Performance Jam. "Music meets speed dating" is how this has been described so be sure to get along and check it out.

The council car park will be transformed into zine and market central on Sunday with the Sunday Fair beginning at 11am. Wander around the various stalls whilst meeting the artists and zinestars whilst purchasing a few goodies at the same time. Entry is free.

If you are wanting to find out just what it takes to get your work published, then head to Customs House at 11am Friday for a panel discussion entitled Getting Published. Tips and tricks from industry professionals and who knows, maybe they'll even suggest sending your work to Urban Insider! The other TiNA event at Customs House worth highlighting comes on Sunday with Iain Mcintyre launching his latest book. Wild About You! goes through the history of 60's beat music in Australia, which all sounds rather intriguing.