When musician Dar Williams took the stage in the lecture hall at the at the Yale University Art Gallery this past Sunday, it was clear that she had done her homework.

She was there to deliver a talk titled “How to Make Your Town Somewhere Everyone Wants to Live” for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. The theme comes from her most recent book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities—One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open-Mike Night at a Time.

“The towns that have high positive proximity are the ones that are looking to the frontiers of social justice,” she added. “A lot of towns now are building up their toolboxes of communication and it is leading them in the direction of the true, strong, proud democracy that we aspire to be.”