THE IA CLEARING TOOLKIt

Weaving together lessons from Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sekou Sundiata’s The America Project, The IA Clearing was a special track at the 2025 IA National Gathering, activated through a series of spaces, activities, and ‘magical questions’.

The IA Clearing invited participants to grapple with themes of critical civic engagement, self-care, and community dialogue, and featured an IA Makerspace, a listening station, a community mapping activity, and a series of ‘magical questions’ on paper airplanes (and other modes of engagement) to foster community dialogue.

HOST YOUR OWN IA CLEARING

In this toolkit, we invite you to tailor and adapt the following IA Clearing Resources for your own communities, using the materials provided below.

1. Begin by posting (or projecting) the following context-setting slides.

2. Set up a maker space with crafting materials and post the following instructions.

3. Set up an ‘imagination runway’ where participants can answer magical questions on paper airplanes, and set them aflight. Encourage participants to pick up an airplane off the runway, add to the dialogue, and relaunch the airplane.

4. You can also invite participants to contribute responses to the magical questions through the online padlet.

_{^{Credit: Visual elements for the above designs were created by Citlali Delgado, visual artist for the 2025 IA National Gathering.}}