B-More With Imagination: 2025 IA Collaboratory Blog Post

Written by Romy Hübler, David Hoffman, Susan Tuberville, Morna McNulty, Sara Kaltwasser, Mike Casiano – B’More with Imagination Collaboratory Leaders

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.

When the six of us first met to discuss the Collaboratory, we wondered: Ten years after the Gathering, where are we now? Have we, as institutions educating students, created and fostered the pathways for scholars and artists to work together to nurture healthy, vibrant, and joyful communities?

After a year of careful planning, the B’More with Imagination Collaboratory brought together three delegations from TU, UMBC, and MICA comprised of students, staff, and faculty for a daylong workshop in which we engaged in a self-reflective investigation and critique about the state of our work in higher education. We asked ourselves:

If we are not thriving, how can we facilitate others’ thriving?

In this moment of transformation across the nation and the higher education landscape, how do we continue to change inequitable institutional and societal structures?

At a time when there is less state and federal funding available for public and educational institutions, what is something that we think we need to do to help our universities and communities thrive together?

How are we coming out on the other side better able to support community thriving for our students, faculty, staff, and the people we work with beyond the campus boundary?

If higher education can do better in building community, we need to start by building community among us.

In the morning, we considered what thriving looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like, and sounds like. We shared our personal experiences of thriving in higher education through reflective drawings, storytelling, and a gallery walk. We extrapolated elements necessary for thriving from these stories to help us imagine what we need.

In the afternoon, we built upon key takeaways and lingering questions to combine abstract, creative thinking with hands-on artmaking that led to the creation of board games that broadly represent how we, in our various positions within academia, navigate the complexities that characterize our experiences.

In designing the board game, we envisioned the landscape of higher education and created a toolbox of obstacles and resources that can help us navigate those obstacles, especially related to our work with communities. We envisioned the “rules” of higher education, both written and unspoken, to reflect upon our experiences and think structurally about how to navigate, lose, and win the “game” of higher education.

The participants’ stories revealed that they had thrived in spaces and roles that foregrounded purpose, shared power, and encouraged reimagination and authentic connection – a testament to the importance of purposeful collaborations and human approaches to cultivating thriving communities.  

Each board game was thoughtfully designed and illustrated that none of us can truly win unless all of us do. While financial resources, strengths, knowledge, and access might be siloed, we need to find ways to work across roles, divisions, and university boundaries to thrive collectively.

We then moved into our university delegations to reflect on the day and brainstorm goals to work on collectively in the coming academic year. Some ideas included:

Offering opportunities for colleagues to meet with the B’More with Imagination Collaboratory to explore how to infuse creativity and imagination in their programs and classes to foreground everyone’s experiences and encourage deeper connections

Working with campus partners to incorporate creativity and imagination in university-wide summits (e.g., Wellness Summit, Inclusion Summit)

Develop and promote opportunities for cross-campus connection through a Community Art consortium composed of students, faculty, and staff from different academic and extra-curricular programming/department

The day ended in a circle, in which everyone shared their personal takeaways, which included feeling refreshed, empowered, and excited for the work ahead.

The B’More with Imagination Collaboratory will continue to work together as a cohort this year to implement the ideas that arose during the workshop. Collaboratory leaders are also exploring ways to continue their cross-institutional partnership beyond the 2026-27 academic year.

The Collaboratory is looking forward to connecting with participants at the National Gathering in Davis, CA in October.