Innovation with Impact 

Newcastle Night Galleries: Where Social Design Meets Creative Placemaking

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The Newcastle Night Galleries are an ambitious public installation blending creativity, safety, and technology to transform the way we think about night-time spaces.

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Developed in collaboration with the City of Newcastle, Newcastle Art Gallery, and a team of technologists and creatives— and led by FASTLab's founders Egglestone and Minichiello—the project applies advanced Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles to deliver something entirely new: an interactive platform designed to bring public art, sound, and augmented reality into everyday urban life.

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At the heart of the project are the ‘henges’—solar-powered, 2-metre-high interactive lightboxes installed across three pilot sites in Newcastle’s city centre. By day, they serve as public art displays; by night, they come alive with immersive soundscapes, motion-triggered interactions, and AR animations designed for discovery and play. From collaborative music-making at Kuwumi Place to playful digital creatures at Market Street Steps, each site offered a unique experience grounded in place.

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The Night Galleries reimagine CPTED—not as surveillance or deterrence—but as activation, creativity, and community-building. By turning underused or overlooked locations into sites of shared cultural expression, the project aimed to foster guardianship through delight, not enforcement.

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This work was made possible with funding from the NSW Department of Justice and the Police Community Safety Fund, and delivered with the support of SMEs including Design Anthology, SAPHI, VEARA, and local creatives Huw Jones and Thomas Mitchell.

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Originally piloted in Newcastle, the Night Galleries henge platform is now being used in Sydney’s Safer Cities initiative, with commercial deployment in development.

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