A working model for the Jacksonville Sister Cities Association 2026 Young Artists and Authors Showcase (YAAS) art competition for its winners, to be documented in the [possible] 2027 network of local art magazines????

A City of Expression believes there is a way to bring global peace through the Sister Cities Young Artists and Authors Showcase (YAAS). By this, we mean documenting the creative process stages through photos, videos, interviews, recordings, and any other manner of presentation of participating youth's art submissions received for local art competitions by Sister Cities non-profit affiliates.

The YAAS theme for 2025 is "Friendship: The Heartbeat of Global Peace," and the creative energy of real-life friendships turned into art interpretations will be revealed by Spring 2026.  The art-creation processes of winning art for the 2026 contest could be documented locally, leading to the global edition within a network of art magazines produced by Sister Cities International (SCI, www.sistercities.org) and its affiliates like Jacksonville Sister Cities Association (JSCA, www.jsca.org).

​

It seems that we are too late to manage this project for 2026, which would have documented the creative processes of all winning art submissions to the 2025 YAAS competitions.  THE APRIL 15, 2025, DEADLINE HAS EXPIRED for the 2025 contest, pushing the creation of a network of art zines to comprehensively cover the winning artwork of the 2026 YAAS in an early 2027 edition, referred to globally as 2027 Green Edition and locally as 2027 Green Edition Jax.

​

The goal now is to create interest among school systems to incorporate the YAAS project into art teachers' lesson plans that would promote local contest winners and facilitate a fair beginning of an "Olympics of the Arts."

​

The winning art could be displayed in a manner that everyone could easily understand, which would provide all of us the opportunity to learn from the youth through a network of local, regional, and global art magazines.  A comprehensive and consistent art judgment process would be established to determine and promote the works of the world’s best young artists in the most effective and efficient methods available. 

​​

SCI will hopefully provide the YAAS themes earlier than Fall to give school teachers at the local level time to incorporate this contest into their class lesson plans.  Local school systems and JSCA are to oversee the best manner to document Jacksonville's YAAS art submissions and the creative production processes leading to the final entries in the 2026 JSCA YAAS art contest.

The SCI 2025 YAAS competition winners' artwork should be presented in early 2026 on a page of the SCI website.  There is so much that is possible with a network of zines, and it would be the duty of all Sister Cities Volunteer Coordinators to find website design students to volunteer in the creation of a global network of art magazines worthy of your attention.

This could be accomplished with the necessary help from students and their school teachers worldwide to help make the series of art competitions work locally, then eventually globally, following the motto of Sister Cities International and its affiliates: "Peace Through People."

​

Your ideas are needed to make this art project run smoothly and fairly for all contest participants, beginning with the JSCA 2026 YAAS Competition.  Please don't hesitate to let us know all your thoughts on making the local contest a success by emailing YellowEditionJax@gmail.com.

These online magazines would promote the creative processes of winning art created using the given theme for the 2026 YAAS competition, which will be announced and promoted by SCI and its affiliates in Fall 2025 to help promote peace.

This is NOT a project by A City of Expression; rather, only the use of our old magazine edition title and content structure (which originally incorporated artwork from varied art categories, artist interviews and reviews, in addition to classified and display advertisements) as a working model for the 2027 Green Edition Jax to be managed by JSCA.

The plan is to help successfully increase the number of JSCA YAAS entries and their creation processes while raising awareness of and potential ad revenue for JSCA.  The edition will be analyzed and improved upon for the formal presentation as a model for all global Sister Cities affiliates to use to achieve excellence.  Participating youth deserve the best presentation of the creation of their annual YAAS art competition submissions!

​

​