Festival Stories

Following the successful launch of the Yale Quantum Institute Artist-in-Residence Program in Summer 2017 and the overwhelmingly positive reception of the artistic residency of Martha Willette Lewis (read the summary of her year here) by YQI students, faculty members, and the general public who took part in the project and attended the related events (over 200 people attended our events), we will continue exploring art as a medium to increase our understanding and discourse of quantum physics.

For this academic year we welcome Spencer Topel as artist-in-residence. Spencer is an artist working...

Sociologists Billy Bromage and Virginia Spell have worked with Arts & Ideas to coordinate a Human Library event on the New Haven Green.

The Human Library creates an experience of open dialogue between diverse people. Individuals volunteer as human ‘books’ and participants can ‘read’ the book. During this half hour they can have a respectful one on one conversation to gain a deeper understanding of one another despite their differences.

The event will take place Saturday, June 24 from 12pm to 4pm. Patrons will be able to ‘check-out’ a ‘book’ at the Festival Center, just to the left of the main...

In 2015, Martin Bresnick picked up Harold Bloom’s The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime to reconnect with old friends: writer Herman Melville and poet Walt Whitman, whose collected works had long influenced his career as a composer, educator, and weaver of musical worlds.

But the book’s affecting first three chapters, dedicated to Whitman, Melville, and poet Emily Dickinson, awakened something deep within him. These figures had created a foundation for a secular, democratic way of looking at the world. And even from their place in the past, they cried out for a...

Arts, Education and Curriculum Specialist of over 20 years, Hanan Hameen is joining the International Festival of Arts & Ideas for her fourth year. Hameen is the current program committee chair of the Dixwell Pop-Up Festival Steering Committee and will be bringing the New Haven Community her workshop, Free to Dance, Monday, June 19 at 4pm at the Festival Center on the New Haven Green.

Free to Dance will be an African dance class that will bring participants back to the root of storytelling. Hameen’s goal is to connect those who attend to a way of expression developed through movement, movement...

Leading up to the Festival, the Festival Fellows, a group of twelve high school students from the greater New Haven area who share a passion for the arts, attended various shows, events, and discussions to immerse themselves in the broad range of the Festival’s programming. One of these was Amir Alan Vahab’s visit to the Fellows’ weekly class at Gateway Community College.

Amir, a celebrated composer and singer of Sufi and folk music, brought in some of his native Persian instruments as well as his vast knowledge and insight into many different musical subjects. Not only did he perform his...

Isolation. Violence. Community. (Be)longing.

Creative Team Aaron Jafferis and Byron Au Yong are bringing New Haven a powerful piece of theatrical composition with the show (Be)longing, performing on the Long Wharf Theatre stage Saturday, June 17 and Sunday, June 18 at 2pm each day. (Be)longing reflects on gun violence, large-scale tragedies and their impact on society. Going hand in hand with the performances are the Activate (Be)longing events taking place throughout the month of June in order to engage the public in discussion and build connections.

The concept of (Be)longing was born when...

Greetings from KeyBank! We are looking forward to June 17 and opening night of the Arts & Ideas Festival on the KeyBank Stage.

For 22 years, Key and its predecessor banks have helped bring the joyous celebration of artistic and educational experiences of Arts & Ideas to the New Haven Green – experiences that epitomize the richness of our thriving New Haven cultural community. This year, our tradition of support continues as we unveil the newly renamed KeyBank Stage – and welcome festival goers to an exciting two- week line up of music, dance and eclectic entertainment free of charge – just...

“We need to remind ourselves of what it means to be in the moment and not distracted by all the various distractions of the modern age, and what it means to be together and to be human and to be engaged; a group of people coming together to make sound is one of the defining structures of our species,” career musician Taylor Ho Bynum said as he stressed the need for creative music spaces within communities.

This June, in order to create spaces in New Haven that foster the education and composition of creative music, Bynum will be conducting a Creative Music Play-In on the New Haven Green on...

When choreographer and artist Camille A. Brown read Kyra Gaunt’s book The Games Black Girls Play, the word “play” immediately shot out. She began thinking about her childhood and the many games she used to play, and how it was hard to find narratives within the media that showcased black girls being just that: girls. The message resonated and became personal. Who was she before the world defined her?

Springing from Brown’s long-held conviction that “It is important for us to talk about human stories on stage, and to tell stories we don’t see enough of,” BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play challenges...

Hi! We are the 2017 Fellows at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. We are a group of 12 (not counting our lovely teacher Sarah Sherban) from all through New Haven. We are banded together by our love for all things art, whether it is music, drawing, or even working behind the scenes to make beautiful productions. Our troop met January 18th 2017 and instantly clicked. Our goal is to learn the inner workings of what brings the Festival to life. As a class we broke up into teams to create series of blog posts on some of what we will be working on, including our experiences and...

Remembering the tragedy at Virginia Tech 10 years ago and knowing how important it is for us to continue the conversation around gun violence and how to prevent it, we're proud to be bringing (Be)longing to the Festival ... take a listen to NPR and join us June 17-18.