The Transformation Project focuses on communicatively transforming lives and relationships at all levels of human interaction. We are a consortium of faculty, students, and community members who seek to discover and promote creative change processes that encourage healthy communication patterns, collaborative group behavior, and equitable forms of social organization. Our work centers on harnessing the energy and urgency inherent in problematic situations and directing it toward empowering individuals, nurturing relationships, enriching organizations, and cultivating community.

[caption caption="Hugh Downs School students dispersed throughout campus in the spring of 2018 with \"Free Listening\" signs. What did they hear? People shared about exam grades (both the good and bad outcomes), stressors regarding setting time boundaries with romantic partners, and the highlights of accomplishing the most challenging level of a video game.

I-4C Events are a collection of the primary components of The I-4C Collective: Innovative Inquiry, Civil Dialogue, and The Empty Space. Innovative Inquiry explores human communication through methodologies, epistemologies, and practices of alternative representations of knowledge. Civil Dialogue provides an innovative tool for productive communication about controversial topics by integrating rhetorical criticism and theories of performance. The Empty Space black box theatre fosters theoretical and practical explorations of performance scholarship.

Intersections of Civil, Critical, and Creative Communication (I-4C)

The I-4C Collective mobilizes resources from rhetoric, performance, and critical-cultural studies to explore the intersections of civil, critical, and creative communication. Through our collaborations, faculty members and graduate students generate research that illuminates our understanding of the human experience in its cultural, contextual, and sociopolitical dimensions.