Propel Center Announces Propel + Beats Living In Legacy Campaign

New visual storytelling promotion will empower student-creators to tell their stories of Propel’s impact, document their own unique HBCU experience and define the Black college cultural legacy for themselves.

The Propel Center, the global HBCU technology and learning hub intended to level the playing field and open greater doors of opportunity for their students, and Beats today announced the launch of its Propel + Beats “Living In Legacy” campaign.

 

The campaign, a promotional, visual storytelling initiative, is designed for undergraduate HBCU students to showcase the impact that Propel, its founding partners and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) themselves are having by uniting in the work of creating pathways to career success for the Black talent pool of the future. Beats will serve as a partner in the campaign, reinforcing its commitment to the advancement of HBCUs.

Under the umbrella theme, “Living In Legacy,” current HBCU students are being challenged to document their own, personalized “Propel Stories,” which will be featured as part of a digital mosaic highlighting the students’ depictions of their Black college cultural experience, and how they are “Living in Legacy.”

Propel student ambassadors will manage a high-level peer nomination process—including overseeing the review and filming— with the goal of ensuring the collection of a diverse series of stories that empower students toward defining and building legacy in their own way.

The Propel Ambassadorship Program will identify one student on each HBCU campus, nominated by a fellow HBCU student to activate Propel’s 2022 engagement. The Propel ambassadors will begin identifying and inviting students to participate via email after a brief interview, after which those selected as members of the Propel + Beats Cohort will share their stories and be assigned to a specific ambassador to collaborate on their 60-second (or less) entry. These designates will then be asked to “tag” a student from a partner HBCU until at least one participating student from every Propel partnering institution has been identified.

Propel’s student ambassadors will additionally support the campaign by leveraging the storied generational social savvy. As part of their outreach and engagement, they will tag @propelcenter and @beatsbydre under a Twitter campaign post using the hashtags #TribeVibes, #LivingInLegacy and #PropellingForward in their own social media shoutouts, sharing the campaign’s Instagram post, tagging at least five classmates and their HBCU in the comments and, finally, following the Propel Center across channels.

“This opportunity is a natural extension of Beats’ HBCU Black Creators Program, which amplifies the great work and vision of amazing Black creatives,” said Astor Chambers, Global Influence and Social Actions Lead at Beats. “By partnering with Propel to highlight and tap into more Black creatives, we are creating additional space for impactful legacy stories to be told.

“What an amazing time in our nation’s history to amplify and exemplify the amazing work of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Scholars attending HBCUs are some of the most creative, innovative and intellectual thinkers. This is evident through Howard University graduate designer Mia Moore, who has created a one-of-a kind pair of Beats headphones that display the rich legacy of HBCUs, which has spanned for over 165 years,” he continued.

“The thoughtful curation created by Mia captures the colors that evangelize our community and speak volumes. Her design aesthetic; yellow for growth, green for renewal, gold for power, red for passion and black for unity in ancestry is the quintessential symbolism of who we are as an HBCU family.

“We vibrate throughout this world producing the largest number of doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and more.  This vibration has manifested into a beat. A beat that transcended a history of challenges. The textile design chosen by Mia displays the interwoven consecutiveness that continues to propel and bind the fabric of our community; past, present and future.”

“We will continue to maintain and sustain our legacy; boldly and confidently through innovation and education.  This is what we do at Propel. These hallmark set of headphones are not just a beacon of who we are, what we are and what we do, but a symbol to the world…we are HBCU excellence,” states Dr. Charles J. Gibbs, President of the Propel Center HBCU Consortium.

“This last year has been as challenging as it has been rewarding. The Beats and Propel Center teams worked so hard to encourage my creative impulses. I wanted to produce something that would serve as a love letter to my experience at Howard University. I also thought it was really important that the design speak to HBCU students past, present and future. These Beats, this design, and our collective experience are proof that our community is living in legacy,” stated Moore.

Featuring state-of-the-art learning technology, the 50,000 square-foot, custom-designed Propel Center facility and campus will support the entire HBCU community through a robust in-person and virtual platform accessible to all HBCU students and faculty, located in Atlanta, Georgia. To learn more about the Living in Legacy campaign, follow the #LivingInLegacy hashtag and @propelcenter on Instagram.

Ed Farm was launched in February 2020 in Birmingham, Alabama to create programs designed to engage students, educators and adult learners in innovative digital skills experiences that better prepare them for the 21st-century workforce. Moving forward, Ed Farm is expanding its programming and its footprint across the country, building on the existing programming and work taking place in Birmingham.

Supported by founding partners Apple and Southern Company, the Propel Center is a first-of-its-kind innovation and learning hub for the entire HBCU community that will serve as a catalytic epicenter of learning, providing students with the knowledge, skills, tools and resources necessary to transform the nation’s talent pipeline and workforce. Through a robust virtual platform, on-campus activities at partner institutions and a physical campus located in the Atlanta University Center, Propel will bring innovative curricula and unprecedented leadership opportunities to produce the next generation of Black leaders.

Beats is a leading audio brand founded in 2006 by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Through its family of premium  consumer headphones, earphones and speakers, Beats has introduced an entirely new generation to the  possibilities of premium sound entertainment. The brand’s continued success helps bring the energy, emotion  and excitement of playback in the recording studio back to the listening experience for music lovers  worldwide. Beats was acquired by Apple Inc. in July 2014.