Rutgers University-Newark recently announced that Newest Americans, a digital storytelling initiative based at the university, “has been awarded a Community Conversations grant of $310,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This grant will support media production for documenting the (im)migrant histories of three Newark neighborhoods, media training in Newark high schools, public humanities programming, and a Newark History Bus that will serve as a mobile neighborhood museum and digital media lab.”
Dr. Tim Raphael, director of the Center for Migration and the Global City at RU-N and co-founder of Newest Americans, told the university press, “Receiving an award of this size from the NEH is a game-changer for Newest Americans in multiple ways. We are particularly grateful for the NEH’s acknowledgement of the value of humanities scholarship and digital media that is place-based and multi-vocal, and that asks questions about both the past and the present from a wider perspective.”
According to the press release, “NEH support will enable Newest Americans to expand its coverage of three Newark neighborhoods—The Ironbound, University Heights and the West Side—in order to closely engage local residents in researching and representing their rich (im)migrant narratives. The History Bus will utilize state-of-the-art technology to share audiovisual materials for an immersive experience of these pilot neighborhoods. Community events will include a series of neighborhood dialogues, Unconferences, and ‘History Harvest’ events over the next year, and skills and tools training for Newarkers to represent the local histories that matter most to them.”