MAGICAL QUESTIONS: RESPONSES FROM THE 2025 IA NATIONAL GATHERING, Part 2

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 listening resources.

Over the course of the gathering, participants were invited to look for ways to ask and answer “magical questions” (Priya Parker, 2020) that opened up conversation and made space for tension and grappling, provided opportunities to share skills and practices, build new and strengthen old relationships, and engage in ways that move us beyond habitual ways of thinking, with grace.

The magical questions were posed from the Opening Plenary, shared through the Gathering app, written on paper planes flying on the Imagination Runway, and elsewhere throughout the Gathering spaces.

The questions were also posted to an online forum, where participants had a chance to listen to responses from other participants and upload their own.

_{^{* Illustrations by Stella Aude; photographs by Andrew Williams; Poster designs by Anuj Vaidya based on original art by Citlali Delgado}}