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![Can Art Save Democracy?](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/01f28611-cde3-444b-a688-b4090f0e61f7/42973787742_77222dd072_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=1376%2C0%2C5504%2C5504&w=290)
Creative expression takes many forms. Through history, art has provoked a range of feelings: emotion, empathy, fear, surprise, joy, compassion, anger. Now, amidst a time of national angst, where many in society might not hear the voices of those who don’t agree, a group of remarkable artists and political strategists are imagining ways that art can be used to catalyze dif...
![Six Hours to Save Democracy](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/f9a5a299-b406-461f-9560-4ece89e6df9e/53814692080_d97793c5e7_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=2256%2C0%2C4641%2C4640&w=290)
What if the threat to American democracy came from within our own military? “War Game,” a 2024 Sundance Official Selection documentary, imagined just such a scenario and convened a bipartisan group of policymakers to respond. What did they learn — and how real is the threat?
![Citizenship and the Beginner’s Mind: How to Imagine Our Way Forward](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/e21ff0c4-e793-4e94-812d-51bfbc6c5323/AdobeStock_268996719.jpeg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=1376%2C0%2C5504%2C5504&w=290)
In this creative session, global citizen-artist Yo-Yo Ma shares ideas with Eric Liu of Citizen University and the Aspen Institute for how to reimagine our lives and responsibilities in American democracy. Drawing on Ma’s new audio experience “Beginner’s Mind,” which traces his evolution as a musician and a human, this conversation will explore what it means to be a good an...
![Carrie Mae Weems: The Personal and the Political](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/73c3dfca-7132-4965-a46c-a26cb420ca46/41238400830_582b6503b5_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=412%2C0%2C2176%2C2176&w=290)
For more than three decades, artist Carrie Mae Weems has created a body of work — including photographs, fabric, text, audio, and video — that probes the fault lines of race, gender, class, politics, and power. In this session, the Prix de Rome and MacArthur Fellowship winner stages a collaborative performance of her work and discusses how it merges the personal and the po...
![Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/null1f72e8ce-bb89-47d1-a78e-10a9fbbdcc83/48127310168_4600e3293d_h.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=279%2C0%2C1042%2C1042&w=290)
In Palaces for the People, New York Times best-selling author Eric Klinenberg believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. In this eye-opening and uplifting session, Klinenber...
![Deep Dive: The Genius of Soul](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/531d3af2-4382-43ab-971b-570f6c583078/28246339847_c4b3531c59_o.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=996%2C0%2C3984%2C3984&w=290)
Born out of gospel, R&B, and jazz in late 1950s America, soul has permeated music culture so thoroughly that its influence can be heard everywhere from modern country music to rock and hip-hop. So what is it about soul, and how did it become a soundtrack to some of our nation’s most defining moments? The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik and Grammy Award-winning artists share —...