ABSTRACT
The Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA) is a unique consortium, uniting 29 community-based ethnic museums, cultural centers, and historical societies with 18 mainstream cultural institutions. CCA’s mission is to effect positive social change and public understanding of cultural diversity through the first-voice perspectives of its members. It provides a new model for collaboration that values the assets of ethnic organizations as equal to the professional expertise of mainstream institutions and harnesses these collective assets to deliver programs that meet both sets of organizations’ needs. Through its civic dialogue program (Talking About…) CCA provides a template for members to collaborate on cross-cultural programs which explore the intersection of contemporary civic issues with cultural heritage. Using Talking About… as an example, we examine CCA’s Civic Engagement Model, specifically addressing efforts to build members’ capacity to engage with issues of contemporary significance and include the diverse voices located within their respective ethnic communities.
