Today’s the final day of the 2001 International Festival of Arts & Ideas. My review of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s Serenade/The Proposition is here; there’s a final performance today (Saturday the 25th) at 5 p.m.

I’m hitting David T. Little’s Soldier Songs at 5 p.m. and then heading to the Green for the fest-closing concert of Freshlyground and Mandingo Ambassadors at 6 p.m.

Might also partake of the various local dance and music acts on the upper Green from noon to 6 pm.

I missed most of A&I because I was in Los Angeles with a gang of other arts journalists covering the Radar Festival, the Hollywood Fringe Festival, the Theatre Communications Group national conference and other events there.

I honestly missed Arts & Ideas, and wished the timing was such that I could hit all of these festivals full-force. Though many of the concert and theater acts at events like A&I and Radar are on a festival circuit and aren’t unique to the festival sponsoring them, the different ways the fests and set up and the audiences they attract really inform each other.

The big distinction of Arts & Ideas is the number of free public concerts it sponsors. Large, involved and diverse audiences add a whole dimension to its reputation as a cultural rallying point.

Sure, there are less free shows than in the fat, well-funded mid-‘90s, but also remember that those event-packed early A&Is lasted days rather than weeks, and that many similar festivals in other parts of the country have disappeared completely, lacking the wherewithal to downsize and endure as Arts & Ideas has.

Can’t imagine June without Arts & Ideas. Glad I can still jump in on the tail end of it.