The UNR Mission

Our Mission  

The mission of the Upper New website and the Upper New Review is to be a curated clearinghouse for expression, exploration, research, learning, design, and stewardship for the populations and communities of the Upper New River Basin.

Our Vision

We intend for the website and magazine to serve as a conversation starter concerning the Upper New River watershed as a home for critical thinking, systems wisdom, ecological literacy, and a sense of place.  We want to understand the Upper New as a commons.  As a neighborhood.  As a sanctuary.  As a community of practice for all residents and visitors.

We want to embody and pragmatize the concept of reciprocal reasoning: a way to use internal and external perspectives as complementary pathways for understanding and appreciating human relationships with (and actions within) the complexity of natural and built systems, and how they interact with each other dynamically over time.

In due time, our intention for the Upper New project is to achieve nonprofit 501(c)(3) status concerning both educational and literary publication operations.

Why curate a print magazine?

We believe some expressions need permanence and tangibility as part of the experience of perception, feeling, interpretation, and understanding.  We’re creating a “temporarily permanent” archive of these expressed works.

With an appreciation of reduced waste, our intention is to only print as many copies of each issue of the Upper New Review as absolutely necessary, avoiding the waste of overstocked inventory. 

For now, we’ll stick with the Upper New website and the Upper New Review magazine.  As we explore the territory and get a sense of what kinds of expressions are happening in the watershed, we hope to expand our offerings in a variety of interesting directions.