The mission of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas is to create an internationally renowned festival in New Haven of the highest quality with world-class artists, thinkers and leaders, attracting and engaging a broad and diverse audience celebrating and building community and advancing economic development. The Festival’s ambitious music, dance, and theater programs fill New Haven with renowned international stars, newly-discovered artists, and a number of U.S. and world premieres each season. The eclectic ideas program offers a mix of serious, controversial, and whimsical topics, all designed to inspire new ways of thinking. The Festival also features plenty of family-friendly events. It continues to make more than 80% of Festival events free to the public, including some of the most prestigious opera, jazz, classical, rock, folk and fusion music in the world.