How did it start?
When did it begin?
Where do I come from?

Our species has an insatiable desire to understand, and to do that we need the backstory. Whether we take our signals from the Beagle, the Bible or the Big Bang, we yearn to connect our evolutionary dots, to find our place and our sense of order. And this inquiry into beginnings extends to the world we create for ourselves – our tools, our stories, our families, our ideas.

In recognition of this bicentennial Darwin year, the 2009 partners of the Art & Ideas Festival will interpret the diversity of ORIGINS through music, dance, visual art, architecture, storytelling, history, science and theater in a mosaic of cultural activities throughout the city of Pasadena.

Art & Ideas, a consortium of Pasadena-area arts and cultural organizations and organized by the Pasadena Arts Council, engages the Southern California community by creating provocative issue-based arts collaborations.

Art & Ideas is held every two years, and follows the model created by earlier collaborations — "Radical Past" (1999), "The Universe" (2001), "The Tender Land" (2004), and “Skin” (2007).

Collaborating partners participate in Art & Ideas by creatively interpreting the theme according to their institutional focus. Drawing on the strengths of Pasadena area arts and culture, educational, and research institutions, Art & Ideas provides a diverse set of high-quality aesthetic and educational activities for mainstream public audiences. Art & Ideas presents original programming, consistent with the theme, that inspires public dialogue across a diverse population and works to contribute to arts appreciation and intellectual growth in creative and meaningful ways.

Our goal is for the theme to ignite a broad discourse and provide multiple perspectives that are both innovative and timely, as well as artistically and intellectually resonant to a diverse audience and a changing world.

For the 2009 theme, the collaborating partners have chosen ORIGINS, and they will explore and interpret this theme through specially curated exhibitions and programs from October 23rd through November 9, 2009. The origins of political dissent, storytelling, crafts and architecture—in addition to deeper questions about the rise of man, faith and the universe—are just a few of the many ways in which this unique theme will be interpreted through dance, visual art, music, architecture, theater, film, photography and literature.