Upstream Democracy: Beauty, Belonging, and Civic Repair
[Top row, left to right] Christina Lessa, Saladin Ambar, Andrew Binger. [Bottom row, left to right] Lucas Johnson, Matthew Steinfeld, Christina Bouey. All images courtesy of the speakers.
Upstream Democracy: Beauty, Belonging, and Civic Repair is a flagship public salon examining how the arts, culture, and aesthetic experience strengthen the upstream conditions of a healthy democratic society: belonging, civic trust, social connection, and collective well-being.
Featured speakers:
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Christina Lessa — Cultural strategist and civic entrepreneur; Founder, Blueprints for Arts and Policy; CEO, Art Vue Worldwide
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Saladin Ambar — Professor of Political Science and Senior Scholar, Eagleton Center on the American Governor, Rutgers University; author and scholar of American political thought, race, and democracy
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Andrew Binger — Program Officer, Community Partnerships, New Jersey State Council on the Arts
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Lucas Johnson — Organizer, writer, and public theologian rooted in the Black freedom struggle; former leader of On Being; advisor to the Dorothy Cotton Institute and board member of Waging Nonviolence
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Matthew Steinfeld, PhD — Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine; clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and scholar of the psychodynamics of music-making
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Christina Bouey — Violinist, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
Moderated by Ian Koebner — Inaugural Chair and Endowed Associate Professor of Arts in Health, Rutgers University
The salon brings together international, national, state, community, and clinical perspectives on civic health, exploring how cultural strategies—and the psychological dimensions of aesthetic experience—function as civic infrastructure capable of renewing the upstream foundations of democratic life.
This event will serve as the launch of the Arts in Health Salon Series and anchor MGSA’s participation in Solving Grand Challenges Month by addressing a foundational democratic crisis: the erosion of civic belonging and the fraying of social cohesion. The answer to our broken politics is not merely more politics, but attending to the cultural, psychological, and relational foundations that make democracy possible.
Seating is limited, please register in advance
This event is a Solving Grand Challenges Month event, in partnership with the Rutgers Democracy Lab at the Eagleton Institute of Politics.
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