Cleveland Humanities Festival

The Cleveland Humanities Festival is a collaborative event celebrating the great cultural institutions of the city of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, dedicated to humanistic inquiry.

The theme of the 202 Cleveland Humanities Festival is ADAPTATION.  How do societies, institutions, and individuals manage change? Adaptation is one of the defining challenges of our time, shaping how we respond to technological innovation, environmental uncertainty, political transformation, cultural shifts, and evolving understandings of identity and community. But how do our responses to these pressures move beyond survival to become opportunities for creativity, resilience, and renewal? When does adaptation preserve what is most valuable, and when does it require us to rethink the assumptions that shape our lives? Adaptation of creative works can provoke vigorous debates over memory, tradition and aesthetic value. How have artists, thinkers and cultural leaders offered essential tools for understanding what endures and what must be reimagined? This year’s Cleveland Humanities Festival invites the community to reflect, imagine and engage with this theme through a series of public events in the spring of 2027.