Emory’s Ideas Festival and 'Promontory XV' explore resilience, memory and Atlanta’s creative landscape

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Rosanne Cash headlines this year’s Ideas Festival Emory, exploring creativity and resilience through music and conversation. (Courtesy of Emory University). Artist Hormuz Minina walks below the retaining wall that anchors “Promontory XV” along the Atlanta Beltline. (Courtesy of the artists)

The Oct. 16 edition of WABE Arts highlights a campus festival that bridges scholarship and creativity, and a Beltline installation transforming a century-old oak into a performance-art stage.


Roseanne Cash to keynote Ideas Festival Emory 2025

Female singer performs onstage with a guitarist
Rosanne Cash headlines this year’s Ideas Festival Emory, exploring creativity and resilience through music and conversation. (Courtesy of Emory University)

Ideas Festival Emory turns the university’s Oxford College campus’s historic quad into an open-air forum for conversation, performance and community learning. Organized by the Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement, the annual gathering invites the public to experience university research in motion — from live music to graffiti art to fireside chats with authors and scientists.

Dr. Ken Carter, who directs the Center, says the goal is to move academic ideas beyond campus walls and into public dialogue. “A lot of what we do at universities is to discover and disseminate knowledge, but sometimes that knowledge is trapped in journals and academic books,” he explains. “This is one of our attempts to share that knowledge with the public.”

This year’s festival explores the theme of resilience, featuring panels and performances on how people adapt and find meaning through change. Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash headlines the program, joining local scholars and creatives for a day of reflection and exchange.