Singer-songwriter and four-time GRAMMY award winner Rosanne Cash will host a Creative Matters event at Hancher Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus at 7 p.m. on Feb. 7. The event is free and open to the public. Cash will be joined on stage by writer A.M. Homes for a conversation about carrying her family’s legacy forward into her own life’s work, her creative process, and more. A question...

On the evening of Thursday, October 4, world-renowned Swiss light artist Gerry Hofstetter will visit the University of Iowa and illuminate the Old Capitol Museum. Hofstetter transforms buildings, monuments, and natural landscapes throughout the world into temporary works of art with spectacular light projections. He has illuminated icebergs, the Colosseum, Great Pyramids, Washington Cathedral...

The idea that “music has the power to change lives” is the organizing principle behind conductor Marin Alsop’s approach to her profession and her public service. In that spirit, she will offer a lecture at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 28 in the University of Iowa’s Voxman School of Music Recital Hall.

Last spring, the Office of Research & Economic Development gathered together 40 artists, scientists, engineers, and scholars to brainstorm possibilities for new interdisciplinary projects that engage the public, either artistically, scientifically, or both.

“We make listening central to our art-making,” said Michael Rohd about his theater company Sojourn Theatre at the Creative Matters lecture on April 5. “We are a theater company, but this isn’t a play that says ‘Come into our theater and let us tell you a story.’ This is a piece that says, ‘Come to this theater and, if you’re willing, engage in a conversation with us.’”

In a time when climate change is still debated, astrobiologist David Grinspoon wants to change the conversation. Grinspoon will offer a lecture titled “Earth in Human Hands: Creating Our Future with a Cosmic View of Our Past,” 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 25, Art Building West, Room 240.

Operating at the crossroads of architecture, computation, science and engineering may seem like an uncomfortable fit. Yet Neri Oxman, associate professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, is demonstrating with her scholarship that this disciplinary partnership is positively organic.

Effective collaboration starts with something very simple: listening. Michael Rohd, Artistic Director of Center for Performance and Civic Practice and the Sojourn Theatre, will speak about his experiences collaborating with arts councils, service organizations, artists, community agencies and local governments around the country to make space and context for meaningful arts based partnership...

Creativity animates life, connects people and is central to our human experience. That is the driving idea behind the Creative Matters lecture series, which continues this spring with a group of speakers who challenge us to think in new ways about the arts, sciences, business and engineering.