Chautauqua’s 2025 Summer Assembly is taking shape — it’s time to start planning your experience! This season features an exceptional lineup of speakers, performers, and artists, including Lewis Black’s biting humor, LeVar Burton’s captivating storytelling, Kwame Alexander’s lyrical poetry, Denyce Graves’s powerful voice, and George Saunders and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s literary brilliance. From lectures to concerts and theater productions, Chautauqua will once again be your community for learning, connection and inspiration. Mark your calendars and secure your gate passes and tickets! 2025 Summer Assembly Sales Schedule December: Select concerts and lectures. The perfect holiday gift — stay tuned for exciting...
Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC), the resident theater company of Chautauqua Institution, today announced their commission and development of a musical adaptation of The Crossover, the critically acclaimed novel by New York Times best-selling author and Chautauqua Institution’s Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and writer-in-residence Kwame Alexander. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll, CTC is cementing its reputation as a national home for exciting new works. Carroll’s tenure has brought a renewed focus on commissioning, developing and producing works from new and established American playwrights. This commitment to fostering innovative storytelling is exemplified with...
In 2014 Junk Free Skin began in a small retail space in Buffalo, New York, where the founders set out to create a bath and body line using clean ingredients and truly sustainable, plastic-free packaging at an affordable price. Today the company is a thriving manufacturing facility equipped with the latest technologies and delivering products nationwide. If you visited Chautauqua this past summer, you may have picked up a free sample of their foaming hand soap at the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative (CCI) table on Bestor Plaza. I got to see Junk Free Skin’s founder, Tom Akers, at the Western...
In July 2024, Chautauqua Institution’s Director of Arts Education Suzanne Fassett-Wright presented at the Kennedy Center’s ED@LEAD Conference. This event is an outgrowth of the Kennedy Center’s LEAD (Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability)Conference. Fassett-Wright lead a session titled “Feelin’ the Beat: Where Drumming and Social Emotional Learning Meet,” sharing out about the Chautauqua Arts Education School Residencies drumming program. This program was developed originally to serve students with disabilities, integrating music and social emotional skill learning. However, it became clear with so many students struggling with social emotional skills due to the pandemic, many schools have been hosting this...
There are moments when an idea evolves into something greater, moments when an observation or a conversation sparks a big idea. These ideas have the potential to shift perspectives, spark action and inspire. Chautauqua Institution is embracing the power of such thoughts with the launch of a new video series called “Big Ideas.” “Big Ideas” captures key insights from Chautauqua Institution’s collection of lectures and programs created during the nine-week Summer Assembly by CHQ Assembly, Chautauqua’s membership-based, streaming platform. Each video distills a single thought from a full-length program into a digestible 3 to 10-minute clip. Instead of watching an...
Empathy to the Rescue How Stories Help Us Find Common Ground on Climate Change The human suffering wrought by hurricanes Helene and Milton in the southeastern United States remind us as the climate crisis deepens, communities across the nation desperately need everyone working together toward solutions. But too often these days, political and social divisions stand in the way of understanding and collaboration — leading to stalemate, inaction and the next climate-fueled tragedy. We need only hear stories of armed militias confronting FEMA responders to understand how deeply polarized our country has become. It’s far more difficult for divided communities to...
Monday, October 7, 2024 Chautauqua, N.Y. – Chautauqua Institution and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra (CSO) today announced a series of new musician appointments. Sharon Roffman joins the CSO as concertmaster after a two-year audition process, Stanislav Chernyshev as Principal Clarinet, and Matthew Strauss as Principal Timpani. Additionally, six exceptional violinists — Leslie Frey Anderegg, Zhe Deng, Zhen Lui, Molly McDonald, Kurt Munstedt and Timothy Peters — have been welcomed ahead of the 2025 season. Cristina Cutts Dougherty’s appointment as Principal Tuba is historic, as she becomes the first female principal tuba player in the orchestra’s history. Led by Music Director...
Chautauqua Arts Education is gearing up for another exciting school year. It promises to be a year of growth, engaging in more schools, strengthening partnerships and impacting students more broadly and deeply than ever before. Resident Teaching Artist Stephanie Dawson has been hard at work, scheduling the Feelin’ the Beat school residency, a drumming program. Over the course of the school year, we will be welcoming four new schools to the program, expanding to two new Little Seeds Preschool locations in Sinclairville and Fredonia, and two new schools in Dunkirk, bringing the total number of schools served to 14 this...
It is with great pleasure we announce news of staff promotions and transitions that stem from our strategic plan’s cross-cutting imperative to mobilize technology. That work has happened under the heading of Project 360, a multiyear project focused on modernizing and aligning Chautauqua’s technology tools to improve patron and staff experiences. The next phase of Project 360 will focus on the implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) system — Salesforce. This initiative will unfold over the coming years and eventually impact every department at Chautauqua. Salesforce will provide transformational tools, enhancing and replacing systems currently being used in Advancement...
This summer was brimming with creativity and excitement as Chautauqua Arts Education extended its programming into the Summer Assembly. Through a wonderful partnership with the Jamestown Summer LEAP program and the Jamestown Boys and Girls Club, fueled by the generous support of the Winifred C. Dibert Foundation and the Lenna Foundation, Chautauqua hosted approximately 320 enthusiastic students by summer’s end. Weeks Five and Six brought a special treat: the return of teaching artists from the Young Playwrights Project (YPP) to the Jamestown Public Schools LEAP (Learning Enrichment and Academic Progress) program. This summer learning/day camp experience is open to current...
