About Us

Renew Brighton helps to connect various community groups, coordinates collective action and enables participation on issues that matter to the people of New Brighton and surrounding areas.

We take on projects that we believe will give New Brighton a fresh and exciting makeover and make Renew Brighton people thrive. We are all about supporting our New Brighton people, whether it is making it easier to get food, access information or just bringing the community closer together.

After the earthquakes, much of our area was broken, and not much seemed to be happening to change it. Lots of our friends were selling up and leaving the area. Some people started to think “what can we do to motivate people to stay?” A question was asked on social media:

“Do you want to renew Brighton?”

Meetings started to brew around kitchen tables, and in gardens, and Renew Brighton was born….

by asking the community “what do you love about New Brighton?”. There was a “wishing tree” where the public could write what they loved on a heart and tie it to the tree at the I Love New Brighton festival. CCC transcribed this data and we created a shared vision.
and have somewhere to go with generous donations, and a lot of hard work from amazing locals. We rented 101 in the mall for a peppercorn, and held parties and gigs. We had an outdoor movie theatre, an outdoor pizza oven where The Common Ground now stands.
with the intention of collaborating on what the community wanted and needed in the area. Design Renew Meetings were held where the community could have input on what Renew should work on.
(many of which you can read more about on our projects page). We continue to pick up projects we believe will connect the community and organisations in Greater New Brighton, and continue to renew the area.