Q: What would happen if you put WUNC News stories in the hands of youth armed with laptops and infectious hip hop beats?
A: You'd get Re-Mixing the News -- it's a new project WUNC launched in 2014 as a part of its American Graduate Project.
WUNC is teaming up with renowned beatmakers and educators Pierce Freelon and Stephen Levitin (aka Apple Juice Kid) for this special project that will engage young people in Chapel Hill over the next several months.
Stephen, Pierce and their students will take WUNC News stories, cut them up and re-tell them using fresh beats created in their Chapel Hill music lab. In the end WUNC and the beatmakers will distribute the re-mixed news stories virally to youth and see what happens. Pierce Freelon and Apple Juice Kid have created labs like this all over the world. Their work was recently the focus of a special series on The World. Here's an example of their global work:
http://youtu.be/_dTk3iiOZS8
This project is a part of American Graduate - Let's Make It Happen, a public media initiative aimed at addressing the drop out crisis. It's made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Re-Mixing the News project is hosted at the Town of Chapel Hill's Beat Making Lab under the old Post Office on Franklin Street.
