How to Cite
Abstract
The Center for Community, Heritage, and the Arts (CHArt) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is focused on preservation and interpretation of the built environment through hands-on engagement with communities, their legacies, and specific places. CHArt furthers the understanding of how the inherited constructed environment intersects with identities and cultural practices by situating architectural preservation conversations and preservation education within a broad interdisciplinary arts context.
CHArt brings together faculty and students from across the university to provide experiences for graduate students in the Master of Science in Architecture - Critical Heritage Studies concentration to engage in interdisciplinary curriculum and research that engages in local solutions and global discourses, methods, and practices focused on tangible and intangible heritages. CHArt and the MS in Architecture – Critical Heritage diversifies approaches and practices of interacting with the past and with places as well as promoting the stories and sites that foreground the heritage of communities underrepresented in heritage professions, practices, and conversations.
This poster shares examples of CHArt’s research, including projects in which the MS in Architecture – Critical Heritage students have been engaged. It will demonstrate applied practices, including Ring Shout dance traditions to incorporate traditional African practices into commemorating important African American sites; music and dance concerts based on oral histories and mappings of a diverse Charlotte neighborhood; a series of exhibitions and site markers focused on fostering community conversations about the legacy of lynching; and an original musical theatre production about textile mill and labor movement history performed on site at a historic mill.
