The Mission.
Develop impactful, inclusive spaces for learning across our schools, our workplaces, and our communities that build the world we want, rather than imitate the world we have.
Our mission is to think critically about how humans use symbols to make meaning and to address matters of common concern in their communities. In other words, Dr. Hayes’ work is interested in what makes both learning and community change more possible. How do we live, work, and learn, especially in the wake of challenges like fear or change, violence or trauma? And especially, how do we organize our communities in ways that build infrastructures, habits, and practices for not only hope, but for joy and success?
In our modern and interconnected, multimodal world, now more than ever so many of us feel exhausted and disconnected. Teachers, healthcare workers, and both corporate and nonprofit managers report unprecedented burnout. Parents, community leaders, and corporate executives are struggling more than ever to manage the expectations of an “always on” world. So many institutional systems, from schools to civic spaces, report failing the communities they were created to serve.
On any given day, if we ask our neighbor, “how are you?,” we often feel it: we are just getting by.
We can build new ways of being, and learning, in not only our classrooms but throughout our communities. We can open our apertures for learning to be responsive to communities of today. Whether we want to transform our approaches in K-12 and collegiate classrooms or whether we want to better understand how post-pandemic communication and learning styles impact community centers & boardrooms, we are living in a unique moment and time. It is a moment that invites us to revolutionize our approaches to communication and learning, leaving behind the uncertainty and anxiety that so often drive division between us. Drawing from what we know about belonging, and from what we know about our brains and about how we communicate, we can eliminate notions of what we once thought impossible. We can embrace connection, imagination, and creativity in our learning and in our everyday surroundings while building the world, and the communities, we want.
For the futures we deserve.
