Students’ Videos Included in ¡NUEVOlution! Exhibit at Levine Museum

UNC Charlotte writing students’ digital stories are part of the ¡NUEVOlution! Latinos and the New South exhibit at the Levine Museum of the New South, in the video series hosted on the Levine Museum’s YouTube channel.

These digital stories created by UNC Charlotte students, along with others in the exhibit, bring the voices and stories of people to the forefront. The exhibit will be at the Levine Museum until Oct. 30, 2016. Over three years in the making and the museum’s most ambitious project to date, ¡NUEVOlution! is a 3,500 square foot bilingual, interactive exhibit with robust programming, civic dialogue, collaborative art and online media that explore the surprising ways Latinos are shaping the South and the South is shaping Latinos.

The increased presence of Latinos in the South represents a regional transformation with national significance.  Over the past 25 years, the South has abruptly emerged as the nation’s most vibrant area of Latino growth. Charlotte and Atlanta top the Nielsen list of fastest growing major Latino metro areas nationwide, up over 400% since 2000. In North Carolina alone, more than two dozen small and mid-sized municipalities are now over 20% Latino. This puts the South at the cutting edge of a nationwide trend that is seeing new Latino populations where none previously existed in nearly every U.S. state.

Many historians consider the dramatic shift and its impact to be the biggest story in southern history since the Civil Rights Movement.  ¡NUEVOlution! explores this topic by sharing powerful, personal stories behind the statistics.

The exhibit poses questions and offers numerous interactive opportunities for visitors to add their voice and create user-generated content that further enriches the experience. In addition, responses to questions posed out in the community and captured by an interactive video story kiosk and via social media are incorporated throughout.

The UNC Charlotte students, working with lecturer Linda Hofmann of the University Writing Program, submitted a collection of 14 digital stories. Each student interviewed a Latino/a living in North Carolina and used either iMovie or Windows Movie-maker for the video. These videos involved writing, interviewing, filming and editing.