The Fourth World Journal Publication and Project News

 The Fourth World Learning Consortium sponsors writers, artists, students, teachers and community leaders each year to participate in our various literacy, writing and arts appreciation programs. Fourth World also awards creative honorarium for all those chosen for publication in our cooperative literary and creative arts magazine.

The California Learning Exchange (2017) led member participants to co-create the inaugural issue of The Fourth World Journal, a digital arts literary and arts magazine dedicated to collective reflection and creativity. This international journal is distributed free to all Fourth World members. 

Teachers, parents, civic leaders and others who organize creative, community gatherings have found the journal useful in facilitating meaningful conversations, while our general readership appreciates the inter-generational conversations and creative expressions dedicated to a more imaginative understanding of fundamental cultural issues of our day.  

To be considered for publication in the upcoming edition of The Fourth World Journal, please send digitally reproducible creative content to fourthworldcooperative@gmail.com prior to May 15th.

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OUR FOUR CREATIVE CONCERNS

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ONE: Memory and Mythopoeia  

How does a culture answer questions such as “what is our purpose?”  and “where do we come from?” and “where are we going?” Works which explore mythic, religious and philosophic possibilities to ask “what do we know and how do we remember it?” as well as “what do we forget and why?” are especially encouraged.  

TWO: Place and Location  

The concept of genius loci often gets to the heart of who we are, our places we hold most dear. The promised land, our sense of home.  Related concerns include exile, wandering and return as well as getting lost and being found are encouraged and creative works centered on questions about “what is familiar and what is terra incognito and why?”  and “why does 'knowing your place' matter and when and how should we find home in a new location?” 

THREE: Citizenship and Struggle   

Some are ruled by ideology or fear while others seemed governed only by their passions, “how and why do we struggle to belong?” and “when is it time for an escape for something new?”  Works which explore the most beneficial forms of citizenship as well as question or examine past, present of potential groupings are encouraged along with reflections and responses which imaginatively consider “how should we best divide people and when should we seek common ground?”  and  “are there alternative forms of creative citizenship as yet unexplored?

FOUR: Art Practice and Progress 

Change seems inevitable, even swift, in the world of individual creative practice and collective expression. New movements, forms and aesthetic practices are constantly appearing and fading as we seek to capture the attention of others, so “how do we best practice the liberal arts and why?” Works in this thematic area of concern should consider the possibilities of unchanging beauty, truth and, or ponder the beginning, practices or end of a certain aesthetics and ask “when is it time for tradition, and when is it time to make everything anew?”   

We also invite you to become a member of Fourth World and also to practice the creative habits necessary to all thriving communities.

As members, we support those who express themselves through print and/or through digitally reproducible mediums - including creative works of writing, music, photography, drawing, painting and videography. 

However, both members and non-members are eligible to submit publication proposals for publication. Submissions must relate to at least one of Fourth World's creative concerns and, at this time, we seek only previously unpublished creative works that can be digitally reproduced.   

Please send all creative submissions to: fourthworldcooperative@gmail.com 

Our Review Board will review your creative work(s) for publication consideration.

Fourth World Projects News

Music Lives!

With a sold-out performance by the L.A. Guitar Quartet, Music Lives! began in 2012 as a series to preserve and promote the performance of traditional musical forms.  Guided by a commitment to musical literacy and a love for the arts, Music Lives!  aspires to serve music students and enthusiasts by exposing them to established performers from around the world (at affordable prices) and offering opportunities to interact with visiting artists, participate in workshops and master classes, and even perform with professional artists in live performances.

The series has presented a variety of artists, including two-time Latin Grammy-winning Cuarteto Latinoamericano, pianists Jorge Federico Osorio and Mauricio Nader, Baroque music ensemble Richard Savino & El Mundo and the internationally renowned baritone Vladimir Chernov.

Fourth World is proud to collaborate with and support Music Lives!  in several of its current performances and related activities, including community visits by Grammy winning latin jazz trombonist Jamie Dubberly and renowned pianist Natsuki Fukasawa and Les Freres Meduses with the silent film “The Unknown.”  

Fourth World  Practices Creative Cooperation 

Precisely because enriching discourse (including thoughtful reading and writing, focused observations and collaborative reflection) seems to be disappearing in the world today, our members believe we must take the time to engage important ideas and express ourselves through cooperative, creative acts.  In fact, modern life itself seems to be putting at existential risk the underpinnings of civilization itself—an individual and collaborative pursuit of the principles and practices necessary for "the good life." Imaginative reading rates are down, civil conversation is endangered, the practice and appreciation of the arts is dwindling. In short, we no longer seem to live creative lives in cooperation with others to pursue common aspirations. Through our events, activities and sponsorship we encourage writers, artists, teachers, students and community leaders to become members in our creative cooperation. 

California and Hawaii Learning Exchanges and The Fourth World Journal

Our recent activities includes a two-part 2017 Learning Exchange as members from Chile, Italy, Mexico and the United States gathered to read, write and talk together while visiting Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks. Participants continued working, from a distance, to collaboratively publish the first themed ("Struggle: Old and New") issue of The Fourth World Journal in 2018.   

A subsequent June 2018 Learning Exchange was held in The Hawaiian Islands and a new group of members traveled together to take creative workshops, have book discussions and explore the natural and cultural wonders of Kauai while researching for and planning the second issue. Members from Afghanistan, Chile, Georgia and California then co-created and cooperatively published the second issue of our international journal - "Cives Sum: I Am Citizen," (Winter-Spring 2019).  The California Learning Exchange (2017) led member participants to co-create the inaugural issue of The Fourth World Journal -- a digital arts literary and arts magazine dedicated to collective reflection and creativity. 

This international journal is distributed free to all Fourth World members annually.  Teachers, parents, civic leaders and others who organize creative, community gatherings have found the journal useful in facilitating meaningful conversations, while our general readership appreciates the inter-generational conversations and creative expressions dedicated to a more imaginative understanding of fundamental cultural issues of our day.  Fourth World Cooperative Publications also publishes and distributes a wide variety of artistic, literary, philosophic, scientific, religious and musical works.  Our publishing house solicits any number of digital forms and digitally-reproducible content is accepted year-round (review fee for non-members); e-mail fourthworldcooperative@gmail.com for peer-review and consideration.  

Recently, Fourth World's Learning Consortium sponsored six (6) high school, undergraduate and graduate students to attend a week-long Learning Exchange in Kauai, Hawaii (June 2018) and write a collaborative, creative arts journal - the second issue of The Fourth World Journal.  This unique group of writers and artists, students and teachers spent a week together on the oldest Hawaiian island, Kauai, as part of our non-profit’s efforts to promote creative collaboration, a love for books and appreciation for the arts. 

With the purpose of encouraging cooperative creative habits (reading, thoughtful conversation about books and ideas, group travel, writing, visual and musical creative expression)and fostering thoughtful, inter-generational exchange, Fourth World offered participants of the 2018 Hawaii Learning Exchange a variety of creative workshops and cultural encounters. The group tubed under a mountain while listening to ukulele and kayaked up a verdant river valley to swim the Wailua Falls; when not snorkeling, picnicking or turtle-watching on the coasts of the Garden Isle, this group enjoyed snow cones and coconuts while sharing diverse perspectives on the idea of "Citizenship," including Mark Twain’s version of paradise and Aldous Huxley’s utopian proposal in Island.  

When hiking the muddy trails of Waimea Canyon and Queen’s Bath, participants also shared ideas about the prophecies of Ray Bradbury and the poetry of Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot and between rising for the sun, hiking the swinging bridge in historic Hanapepe and visiting the Kilauea Point Lighthouse wildlife refuge there still was time to enjoy sunsets at luau and on the beach as well as a variety of musical performances and invigorating group, mealtime discussions on questions ranging from "Who belongs and why?" to "What does the future of citizenship hold?"

Everyone brought to the island a unique experience - as a student or teacher, reader or writer, child or parent, war veteran or photographer, world traveler or homesteader - and now each returns with new friends and ideas, fresh perspectives, pictures and a series of notebook entries for their future journal creative contributions. The task for each member of the Hawaii Learning Exchange was then to cooperatively write, design, edit and publish the second issue of our creative arts journal, The Fourth World Journal, inspired by the Kauai island experience.

Our 2019 visit to Mount Shasta, California has inspired our third issue, an extended quarantine edition that captures the “magical mountain” both before and after the pandemic. The final edition is due out late summer 2022.

The Repast Project

Fourth World hopes future generations still find the time to eat slow foods and converse about complex questions, books and ideas. For this reason, we offer The Repast Project: Mealtime Conversations to hundreds of students and their extended families each year. 

Hosted in local restaurants, homes, farms or vineyards, our supper and dinner club events provide a free gourmet meal and book to each student participant as well as the opportunity to talk thoughtfully about complex, contemporary issues such as Artificial Intelligence; Borders, Money and Citizenship; The Means and Ends of Public Education and The Politics of “We the People" with college and university professors, artists and community leaders.

The Repast Project takes as its starting point the notion that our technology saturated society, political polarization and global economy have all conspired to give us little room in our lives for genuine, productive conversations among equals concerning things that matter.

Academic studies from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Illinois all demonstrate that students who enjoy family meals are 40 percent more likely to get A’s and B’s in school, are more emotionally mature and have low stress-levels, positive peer relationships and healthy lifestyles.

In other words, not having sit-down dinner conversations have broad socio-economic, cultural and academic ramifications. These mealtime learning encounters (a meal and discussion over a book, cultural event or movie) promote thoughtful mealtime conversations, a dying art in our cyber-age.

Fourth World was also recently mentioned in a news article: NEH For All Projects.