The Studio for Art, Faith & History has partnered with Classical Academic Press and its president Dr. Christopher Perrin in developing a series of programs in Orvieto for the growing movement of classical-Christian schools, with seminars for both teachers and students. Classical Academic Press is the publisher of Dr. Skillen’s recent book Making School Beautiful (2020).

The mission of Art & Theology, created by Victoria Emily Jones, is to help the church rediscover its rich heritage in the visual, literary, and musical arts and to open it up to the activity of contemporary artists, whose giftings can enable us to see God in new and different ways. Art can enhance our spiritual perception, enrich our prayer lives, stimulate renewed engagement with the Bible, make us more empathetic, and challenge our beliefs in a healthy way.

The Orvieto-based Kamina Teatro, directed by Italian actor and dramatist Andrea Brugnera, has been the Studio’s closest collaborator in productions of religious drama both from the body of medieval sacre rappresentazioni and of newly-composed plays about modern figures. Productions have included La Discesa agli Inferi (Harrowing of Hell), Giobbe (Job) by the modern French writer Fabrice Hadjadj, L’Albero della Fede (Tree of Life), Balaam and the Ass, Le Porte Regali about the Russian theologian and martyr Pavel Florensky, San Giovenale (Saint Juvenal), evangelist of Umbria, San Giuliano (Julian the Hospitaler), and, soon to be produced, a play about the Carmelite nuns martyred during the French Revolution.

The mission of the Colorado-based Anselm Society is “to reunite the church and the arts, so that believers can more fully and richly participate in the work of God in the world,” thereby prompting a Renaissance of the Christian Imagination. Director Brian Brown and his leadership team have found in Anselm Fellow John Skillen’s essays an encouraging guide to the Society’s “vision of a healthy relationship between pastors, artists, audience, and patrons.”

The mission of Renew the Arts is to enlist Christian communities to “support artists in their God-given callings,” particularly by providing artists with up-front funding for particular projects. When communities of faith become active patrons of the arts, the artist’s creative freedom is grounded in “a supportive and accountable community” invested in the work of art—a vision that the Studio for Art, Faith & History shares with Justus Stout and Michael Minkoff, co-founders of Renew the Arts.

Rev. Dr. Susan Skillen is a spiritual director and trainer of spiritual directors whose approach is grounded in medieval Christian practices and in the understanding of spiritual formation especially of the saints and mystics who lived in central Italy and Rome. Saints Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Claire, and Ignatius of Loyola are the subjects of regular pilgrimage-retreats developed by Rev. Skillen in collaboration with the Studio for Art, Faith & History. Rev. Skillen is an ordained priest in the Anglican Church of North America, and Canon for Spiritual Formation in the New England diocese.

Karin Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari, based in New York City, was born two decades ago in Orvieto out of conversations between theater artist Karin Coonrod and the Studio director. Their first production was Laude in Urbis (later Strangers and Other Angels), a series of six plays from the medieval cycles recast for modern audiences, performed for three years on the streets and piazzas and churches of Orvieto. Laude in Urbis launched a new tradition of theater in Orvieto at the time of the holy-day of Corpus Christi. Since then, Colombari and the Studio have collaborated in Orvieto on productions of Romanian playwright Andras Visky’s Juliet/Giulia and the Renaissance opera Orfeo by composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Founded by Studio director John Skillen and Orvietano friend and colleague Alessandro Lardani in 2005, the Festival of Art & Faith has grown under Lardani’s leadership into an annual series of events in the visual arts, of music old and new, of cinema especially by new film-makers, with lectures by prominent Christian apologists, cultural theologians and journalists, scheduled in conjunction with Corpus Christi, the holy-day established from Orvieto in 1264 by Pope Urban IV.