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Planning the Aspen Ideas Festival is typically a year-round endeavor for organizers like Killeen Brettmann and Kitty Boone at the Aspen Institute. Last year, after canceling the in-person series of big-picture conversations, they had just five weeks to plan a digital iteration.
“For us to pivot we are live conveners and that’s what we do. To all of a sudden become digital producers was a steep learning curve but something that our team really embraced,” Brettmann said this week.
With the uncertainty of COVID-19, planners aimed for another round of virtual programming in 2021. But then, things started looking up with increased vaccination rates and fewer pandemic restrictions and Brettmann and Boone had, once again, just five or six weeks to add a live component to this year’s Ideas Fest, which runs June 27-July 1 with both in-person and online programming.
/ The Aspen Ideas Festival will continue to be virtual this summer. Organizers said they ll return to an in-person event next summer, with a virtual option available for online audiences.
As more people get vaccinated and temperatures warm up across the country, people have nostalgia for the before times before the pandemic, that is. Recent data suggest that nearly two-thirds of Americans are intending to travel for vacations, and some are planning overdue family gatherings. Others still are getting back into specific summer habits, and looking forward to the many summer-long festivals the region has to offer.
Earlier this spring, Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater announced a return to in-person concerts with limited attendance, and in the Roaring Fork Valley, some beloved events will once again be in-person. Others will wait out another summer online while public health orders remain in flux, and some will offer a little bit of both. Some organizers say that latter hybrid mo
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Staff report
The Aspen Ideas Festival in June will be a virtual gathering like it was in 2020, with the possibility of any in-person sessions hinging on the state of public health.
The lineup of speakers will be unveiled in 2021, but next year’s theme already has been determined. “American Futures” will examine issues ranging from “democracy to science, the USA’s role on the world stage, and inequality,” said an announcement Tuesday from the Aspen Institute, which organizes Aspen Ideas.
Aspen Ideas is scheduled to run online from June 27 to 30. Organizers said they will know by the end of February if any in-person events can be held on the Aspen Institute campus located in the West End neighborhood. That will depend on “on progress on the vaccine rollout and public health guidelines,” said the announcement.