In moments of global uncertainty, when polarisation fractures societies and digital acceleration reshapes our daily reality, the need for genuine dialogue has never been more urgent. At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, we gather each year to confront the world’s most pressing challenges. Yet even amid economic forecasts, geopolitical conversations and technological breakthroughs, one essential force remains quietly embedded at the heart of our collective endeavour: the arts.

Rooted in this year’s overarching theme, A Spirit of Dialogue, the Arts and Culture Programme invites leaders from every sector to engage with creativity not as ornamentation, but as an indispensable framework for understanding our shared humanity. Through works spanning performance, installation, immersive technology and participatory experience, the programme seeks to demonstrate a simple but profound truth: the arts remain one of our most powerful tools to foster empathy, ignite imagination and catalyse collective action.

At a time when discourse is flattened into sound bites and algorithms shape what we see, the arts remind us of something essential: dialogue is not merely the exchange of information but the meeting of inner worlds. Art ventures into spaces where policy briefs and position papers cannot go, offering nuance, ambiguity and emotional resonance. It creates room to reflect on who we are, who we aspire to be, and how we might bridge the widening gaps between us.

This year’s Arts and Culture Programme is anchored in three thematic pillars: Human Presence in the Digital Age, Tradition and Innovation and Connection and Collaboration, which guide a curatorial approach balancing intellectual rigour with immersive engagement. Each artistic encounter is designed to become a catalyst for connection.

The programme opens with a concert that encapsulates this very intersection. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, joined by the world renowned violinist Renaud Capuçon, performs classical repertoire accompanied by a real-time, AI-generated interactive visual installation by the artist Ronen Tanchum. With each note translated into dynamic digital imagery, the performance becomes an exploration of how heritage and innovation can harmonise rather than collide. It is a dialogue between past and future, craft and code, human intention and computational possibility.

Embracing plurality

In the second half of the concert, the multi-Grammy Award-winning composer and musician Jon Batiste extends this conversation. Few musicians blend genres with such fluidity, and few performers embody so clearly the belief that music is a universal language. Batiste’s work reminds us that creativity thrives not through uniformity but through the interplay of diverse traditions, perspectives and voices. His performance becomes a call to embrace plurality and to listen, truly listen, to one another.

Across the programme, artistic voices act as mirrors and bridges, reflecting the complexity of our shared world while opening new channels of connection. Thijs Biersteker’s installation Forestate, created in collaboration with Unesco, transforms Unesco-validated Global Forest Watch data into a visceral, time-based sculpture. Through a choreography of appearing and disappearing leaves, the work gives form to the shifting rhythms of global forest loss and renewal. In an era overwhelmed by statistics, it translates data into feeling, making the cycles of loss and renewal immediate and impossible to overlook. Here, art functions as both witness and warning.

Participating at Davos for the first time, Marina Abramović offers a different form of intervention. THE BUS, her mobile installation, is an invitation to slow down radically. In a world defined by constant acceleration and productivity, Abramović asks us to reclaim presence, to pause, breathe and remember that reflection is not the opposite of progress but its prerequisite.

Ronen Tanchum’s Human Atmospheres, a Forum-commissioned large scale artwork, positions AI not as an external tool but as a collaborator. This immersive environment responds to participants’ gestures and proximity, creating a living digital ecosystem shaped by human presence. The installation challenges us to rethink boundaries between physical and digital space and to consider how technology might augment, rather than erode, human connection.

In the artist JR’s Wrinkles of the City, memory itself becomes monumental. By elevating portraits of elderly citizens onto public surfaces, JR restores visibility to generations who hold our collective histories, generations too often overlooked in cultures captivated by youth and novelty. His work reminds us that progress without memory is fragile.

Driving societal change

The Arts and Culture Programme is more than a showcase of creative excellence, it is a platform for reimagining how culture can drive societal change. This year, we are joined by cultural leaders whose work bridges creativity and impact. Included in the AM26 Cultural Leaders cohort are the Recording Academy chief executive Harvey Mason Jr.; the writer and advocate Suleika Jaouad; the author and activist Katie Piper; and the inspirational leadership strategist Hiro Iwamoto, the first blind sailor to cross the pacific ocean. Their presence underscores a core conviction of the programme: creativity is most powerful when mobilised toward purpose.

In Davos, where global narratives are shaped and future pathways charted, the arts serve as a reminder of the human stakes behind the headlines. They challenge us to think differently, feel deeply and imagine boldly. As we face a world transformed by digital disruption, ecological crisis and social fragmentation, the arts offer not escape but orientation. They help turn dialogue into understanding, understanding into empathy, and empathy into action.

And within that alchemy lies our greatest hope for a more connected, thoughtful and responsive world.

• Joseph Fowler is the head of arts and culture, World Economic Forum