We are interested in connecting with writers and storytellers who are artist, as well as arts organizations working with communities in transition.
We've developing a magazine project called Oci Novosti which means Eyes News in Macedonian. The mission is to share community, regional, national or even international news as seen through the eyes of artists.

We'd also be interested in connecting with other organizations to expand the scope of this project to support a regionally global focus. Our intention is support communities seeking to take steps toward cohesion, exploring democracy at the grassroots level, informing about issues impacting those typically ignored, creating a place to generate ideas to tackle community challenges, and to develop public-private partnerships that can leverage existing resources by focusing attention on the quality of relationship.

The topics for which contributions are needed include:

One contest being developed as a magazine Feature involves finding an image or images that would be regarded as or represents a problem in a community and then frame some part of it to find or create an image of beauty and then it's contrast.

For this issue artist are invited to explore two concepts relative to this work....Starting with Convergence and Contrast as define here and here.
Submissions also invited for these features:
Are YOU ready to be part of the solution?
Economic Development from the Bottom Up
Searching for Mother's Garden
Role of Technology
Up Close
ART AS EXPRESSION OF POLITICAL LIFE
SOCIETY...EYES OF AN ARTIST
ART FOR LIVING
ART AS PHILOSOPHY
ART AS HISTORY
OPEN DIALOUGE

Articles, written and photo essays, drawings, paintings, sculpture, poetry and mixed media works exploring this concept are all welcomed via digital image file. (jpg, gif, or png formats). All rights on the artwork featured remains with the artists. If you have a website or organization you want mentioned in you byline include that info also.

The project is beginning with an digitial publication to be followed by a small print magazine to be distributed locally in Skopje [Oci Novosti Balkans] and possibly in Dutch in the Netherlands. It will focus on the community and art scene through the eyes of artists working and studying in communities around the world. The print magazines will be used in communities with low internet participation as a tool to engage them in online activities/communities.

The magazine will seek to be a bridge between artists and specific opportunities to get sponsorship for the publication/distribution of existing work or commissions from organizations and individuals...with a special focus on businesses.
What is Oci Novosti Magazine as a project series about?

Question

When you see the World’s Need, Do You ask “what can I Do”?

Antiphon

Accept====>Understand====>Do

Vision

To create “boutique” solutions that advance the automation of global social responsibility (GSR) based on social capital focused CRM strategies.

Mission

To explore the possibilities to create a sustainable culture of peace and responsibility that values and celebrates art, culture, and creative expression.

Goals

Inspire people to explore art, culture, and creative expression with joy and curiosity instead of judgment.

Invite support for Cultural Fusion Art_Works and Art_Projects as steps toward systems that involve increasing numbers in automating GSR through concepts explored in SoulFood Tradition

Invite others to participate in this new framework resulting from the Cultural_Fusion Series and approach to CRM Strategy infused with Attention.
Visit this page for more information

Thanks for taking the time to pay attention to this request.

OCI NOVOSTI is about to kick off as a Cultural Fusion Group project with the instructor and students of NGO Art Studio in the Republic of Macedonia.

The project is beginning with an digitial publication to be followed by a small print magazine to be distributed locally in Skopje [Oci Novosti Balkans] and possibly in Dutch in the Netherlands. It will focus on the community and art scene through the eyes of artists working and studying in communities around the world
Oci Novosti means Eyes News in Macedonian.

The project serves multiple purposes, most obviously it informs and involves the community in the arts...It gives voice to the previously voiceless... it illuminates the community through new eyes for the global network when FOSS (free open source software) can be leveraged to deliver ICT solutions for innovative projects that seek to create income generating projects that support arts/artist. The rights to artwork featured in the magazine remains with the artists, and if you'd like to promote your website, send that info with your submission.

The magazine will seek to be a bridge between artists and specific opportunities to get sponsorship for the publication/distribution of existing work or commissions from organizations and individuals...with a special focus on businesses.
What is Oci Novosti Magazine as a project series about?

Question

When you see the World’s Need, Do You ask “what can I Do”?

Antiphon

Accept====>Understand====>Do

Vision

To create “boutique” solutions that advance the automation of global social responsibility (GSR) based on social capital focused CRM strategies.

Mission

To explore the possibilities to create a sustainable culture of peace and responsibility that values and celebrates art, culture, and creative expression.

Goals

Inspire people to explore art, culture, and creative expression with joy and curiosity instead of judgment.

Invite support for Cultural Fusion Art_Works and Art_Projects as steps toward systems that involve increasing numbers in automating GSR through concepts explored in SoulFood Tradition

Invite others to participate in this new framework resulting from the Cultural_Fusion Series and approach to CRM Strategy infused with Attention.
Visit this page for more information

The reason for approaching this undertaking from the perspective of an artist is hopefully becoming clear. If the paradox of the present situation is to be confronted then the opportunity for commerce that embraces humanity is found in art as creative expression, including but not limited to a plethora of visual mediums, music, oral traditions and storytelling, edutainment tools for personal development and commerce as distribution channels for ideas developed in papers such as these. And it is this approach that will transform this Fusion Renaissance into Fusion Enlightenment.

Cultural Fusion is an attempt to address the needs of a few primary market segments...marrying business and the creative pulse of humanity.

One, the artist or person with creative talent, and the other small and midsized businesses that need those skills and the ecosystem in which they operate; hoping to thrive. Ideally, all will have credibility, the artist will have time and skills, and the businesses will have connections and money. When matching needs meet, a deal can be struck, according to Robert Fletcher, self-made millionaire and founder of Personal Achievement Consulting. He identified five criteria for making a deal:

1. Time

2. Money

3. Contacts

4. Skills and abilities

5. Credibility

The major identified problem was that artists commonly struggle to balance the need to remain connected to the experiences that inspire them with the need to support themselves and their families. The result is often the archetypical starving artist.

Businesses need methods of advertising that will attract attention to their offering, in addition to drawing eyeballs to your ads. Businesses also need to find freelance talent and sponsorship opportunities that build relationships.

Most would agree that creative solutions are called for, but few think of looking to artists to find them. Cultural Fusion is a new generation of collaborative art. It offers to artists an artistic response, conceptualizing new models for business development that meet the needs of both commerce and the creative individual. On the creative level, Cultural Fusion is a performance art and multimedia installation series that incorporates personal and business development using exhibition events and contextual promotional content. This is accomplished by free and paid members creating knowledge sharing content that establishes the creator's expertise by drawing Attention to it. As a product offering this results in Attention Gravity via Hotel Infinity connected portals.

Decision makers are being challenged by reality to align their organizations to operate in a radical re-envisioning of business in community, not where they are presumed leaders but as agents of knowledge that is authentic, unique, and valuable and delivered the way it is wanted on demand.

Typically, marketing appears to operate on the assumption that the consumer is disposable - use and discard! Marketing and related activities therefore encourage mindless devouring of goods based on the assumption of either lack or imperfection.

On the other hand, a customer is a human being who trust a business to help him or her solve a problem. It is a relationship that is based on converging needs and context because it acknowledges the personhood of an individual.

If a person thrives, not simply when loved but also when given the opportunity to give love, that is clear evidence of the value of social capital. Again, noting the problem of using pre-existing terms and butting heads with the preconceptions they conjure up: Can I put that problem aside for a second? A human being is a complete organism and nothing can be added to make it more human or more whole, so marketing activities need to shift toward engagement informed by that awareness. From my experiences, we humans are most aware of our wholeness when we give the best of ourselves.

Why this dramatic turn toward the arts? Because when investigating how to infuse attention as a product into an offering, creative services and the arts are a no-brainer; and few activities work as well to create emotional bonds as helping others succeed.

As part of the philosophical inquiry art helps to understand these issues with regard to human nature in ATTN: The are of un-knowing when Ron's writes: "Art, in its own unique way of expression, is a way out of this dilemma. The dilemma is that our minds must be free, unique without conflict or argument; yet our intuition is one.