2022: IDENTIFY

How we IDENTIFY and talk about ourselves, our communities, spiritual practices, artistic practices, and more frames how we walk in the world. Identifying one way or another expresses core and foundational aspects of our very being. Spirit & Place invites you to be a part of this year’s festival by using the arts, humanities, and religion identify and explore the truth of who we are.

What do the humanities—history, literature, ethics, etc.—tell us about who has/had the power to shape how we identify? How might one’s faith inform the way they walk in the world and identify with others? What do the arts reveal about us as individuals and society? How might a combination of these tools help us wrestle with what it means to adopt – or resist – news ways of identifying? How might they aid in a deeper recognition of what unites and divides us?

Using the arts, humanities, and religion, we hope you will creatively examine ways for the community to better see how our individual and collective are shaped by the ways in which we IDENTIFY.

Are you interested in creating an event for this year’s festival and need helping thinking about how to tackle theme? Check this out!

Every living thing needs nourishment. Seeds need fertile soil so that they might sprout. Those sprouts become crops that then need sunshine and rain to thrive. Animals need plant and other animal life to consume so that they might live to reproduce and continue the cycle of life.

We humans? We too need nature’s bounty to sustain life. But we also need music. And dance. And poetry, literature, faith, art, stories . . . and each other. Nourishment is more than sustenance. Nourishment is what is necessary for us to grow and be healthy not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

How does art feed the soul? How do the humanities help us connect more deeply to each other so that we not only survive in the world, but thrive in it? What do our faith traditions tell us about holding onto hope and nurturing a shared sense of purpose?