2025 IA COLLABORATORIES REPORT BACK

In 2025, IA launched six new collaboratories, welcoming emergent partnerships and new communities of practice to form in areas of shared interest among IA members and partners in the broader IA network. Five of these collaboratories completed their projects and shared back via blog posts over the last few months. We gather these report backs here for ease of access.

These projects showcase the diversity of approaches to community-engaged scholarship from a puppet parade performance and communities of practice on radical pedagogy, to regional organizing, speculative futures, and student refuge, the following projects were carried out across 10 IA member campuses and collaborated with at least 7 other neighboring campuses and communities.

Photo of around twenty people sitting in a large circle. One woman is standing by a poster with post-its on it. Behind them a slide is projected that reads, "BIG QUESTIONS", with three questions written out below, and a photo of a mural on the right. Teal text in the top right of the image reads, "Read the B-More with Imagination BLOG POST".

Baltimore was the site of Imagining America’s 15th National Gathering, which centered on the theme “America Will Be! The Art and Power of ‘Weaving Our We.’” A decade later, three of the institutions that hosted the Gathering – Towson University, UMBC, and MICA – responded to IA’s call to form a new Collaboratory, B-More with Imagination. Learn more about their activities in this blog post.

Photo of a group of people standing spread out in what looks like a dance studio. They are of diverse ages and races. One person in the forefront of the photo is in a wheelchair. They all have their arms stretched out in front of them. Some have their palms to the sky, some have them facing down, and some have their hands together. It looks like they are participating in a workshop.

Enacting Our Radical Imaginary (EORI): A Place-Based Activation of Speculative Learning Design, a 2025 Collaboratory, aimed to turn student projects into embodied learning experiences for the broader Georgetown community. The primary partners for this work included students and faculty from the Critical Speculative Design course; the EnActors; and the Red House, Georgetown’s curricular innovation unit, and its Baker Family Terrace, an outdoor studio classroom and gallery.

Photo of a group of young people outside in front of a red building with a big logo on in that says, "wild mountain cooperative". There is one woman kneeling, and one woman sitting in front, and two rows of people standing behind them. They are of diverse races, and are all wearing multiple layers.

Following the 2024 election, the Creating Refuge Collaboratory (featuring participants from Bates, Bowdoin, Carleton, and Macalester Colleges) emerged as a collective effort to explore the ways in which civic and community engagement centers could facilitate intersectional spaces of community care, resiliency, and creative resistance for students and communities. Learn more in this blog post.

In this collaboratory blog post for Pedagogies of Possibility, Jessica Bacal and Deborah Keisch are inspired to ask: What does it look like, in practice, to pay attention to possibility? What does it look like inside our classrooms, in 1:1 meetings with students, in our assignments, with our colleagues? What does it look like for those of us trying to stay under the radar because we are pre-tenure or are otherwise precarious due to our job title or social identities?

In this collaboratory blog post for Dreaming America: Enacting Community Joy, Michael Stevenson Jr., Gregory MacNaughton, and Kate Duffly, introduce the concept of grassroots community parades—people-powered processions that strengthen communities and imagine more just futures by moving and celebrating together in public space to create a feeling of solidarity and connection.

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Funding has been provided by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.