The International Festival of Arts & Ideas

We laugh. We sing. We dance. Our eyes are opened. Our minds are changed. Each year, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas delights audiences with outstanding entertainment and inspiring programs. The Festival celebrated its 23rd anniversary this year, and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven has been there right from the start.

Festival founders Anne Calabresi, Roslyn Meyer and the late Jean Handley knew the Festival needed to engage a diverse audience, celebrate and build community and advance economic development.

They approached The Foundation in 1996 for a grant to “create an inclusive annual festival, showcasing many art forms and education experiences.” Since then, The Foundation has supported the Festival every year. As of 2018, total grants and distributions have reached over $4 Million from unrestricted competitive grant processes and donor advised funds.

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven has supported the Arts in our region for more than three-quarters of a century. The first designated fund to provide grants in perpetuity to a local arts organization was established at The Foundation in 1942 by bequest of stock; more than two-dozen have since followed. In the 1980s, The Foundation issued an Arts Challenge that prompted community arts groups to broaden their funding sources and create a permanently endowed Arts Fund. Every dollar raised for the new Fund by participating arts organizations was returned to them by The Foundation with a bonus. Since being established, the Arts Fund has distributed nearly $5 Million to a variety of visual and performing arts nonprofits.

In the 2000s, The Foundation joined other public and private sector funders to launch The Greater New Haven Arts Stabilization Project. Eight arts ‘anchor’ institutions — including the Festival — received financial and technical assistance and reported an improvement in total working capital by $5.8 Million.

To continue strengthening the region’s arts community, The Foundation adopted a threepronged approach in 2013. This approach includes raising new, local funds, developing audiences and continuing general operating support to community-building organizations like the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

For more than two decades, the Festival has introduced area residents from both the city and the suburbs to extraordinary music, dance and theater, expanding our artistic horizons and broadening our understanding of other cultures. The Festival annually includes more than 200 events, 80 percent of which are presented free of charge.

Citizenship — local and global — was a dominant theme of the 2018 Festival, which was explored across a variety of performances and related events.

Just like the Festival founders did, today’s supporters continue to believe in the Festival’s ability to heighten our understanding, imagination and celebration of diversity.