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Developing Capacity Building.

Reflections on experiences in Chicago’s Field Museum, US

Nunzia Borrelli, PhD

University of Milan Bicocca, Faculty of Sociology.

Email: nunzia.borrelli@unimib.it; nunzia.borrelli@gmail.com.

Nunzia Borrelli obtained her PhD in 2005 in Spatial Planning and Local Development at Turin

Polytechnic, Italy, with a thesis on Urban and Territorial Governance. In 2007, she spent several

months as a visiting researcher and lecturer at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage

Studies at Newcastle University, UK. In 2009-2010 she was a Fulbright research scholar at

Loyola University Chicago, IL, USA. Currently, she is a contract Lecturer in Urban Sociology

and Post-PhD researcher at University of Milan Bicocca.

Peter Davis, Emeritus Professor

International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, 18 Windsor Terrace, Newcastle

University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.

E-mail: peter.davis@ncl.ac.uk.

Emeritus Professor of Museology at Newcastle University, Peter’s research interests include the

history of museums, the history of natural history and environmentalism, the interaction

between heritage and concepts of place, and ecomuseums. He is the author of several books

including Museums and the Natural Environment (1996), Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place (1999;

2nd edition 2011) and, with Christine Jackson, Sir William Jardine: A Life in Natural History

(2001).

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Developing Capacity Building: New challenge for museums.

Reflections on experiences in Chicago’s Field Museum

This article explores one aspect of the debate concerning the role of museums in

contemporary society. From dusty storage facilities for ancient artifacts that are

considered important by a handful of scholars, museums have become “social

agents” (Janes, 2009), able not only to assume social responsibility (Janes and

Conaty 2005), but to trigger changes by developing capacity building (Anderson,

2011). This idea is an evolution and an active expression of the school of thought

known as “New Museology” that emerged between the 1960s and 1970s; new

museology focussed on how museums might assist disadvantaged communities

and boost processes of societal, cultural and environmental transformation

(Davis, 2008). In order to discuss how museums are changing their role in the

contemporary society and are tackling new challenges an analysis of the Cultural

Connection Program (CCP) implemented in 1998 by The Field Museum

(Chicago) and the Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA) consortium is presented.

Keywords: capacity building, social agents, partnership, museum, new

museology

Could Museums be social agents?

New Museology proposed that museums, by encouraging direct involvement of local

communities, can not only increase cultural understanding and social responsibility, but

also promote new social actions (Davis, 2008, 2011). New museology’s philosophy

recognises that communities should be central to, and involved in, the purpose of

museums; objects are important primarily for their associations, meanings and

significance to their communities. The principal theme of new museology is that

community-involvement, being a learning process, permits the growth of the local

population’s awareness about the importance of local heritage assets. Moreover, such

processes encourage people to work together and to make decisions. New museology

seeks to provide an opportunity for individuals to become “heritage or cultural

custodians” and to develop a sense of belonging to a place and a strong appreciation of

local identity. In other words, stimulating actors to recognize and to evaluate cultural

resources allows the gain, or improvement in, cultural capital (Corsane et al. 2007). At

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the same time, participation processes encourage local people to organize themselves,

strengthening the trust among actors and their social relationships, so consolidating

social capital. Finally, participation processes help to identify the values of a territory

and empower local actors, improve capacity building and promote the formation of

institutional capital (Karp 1992; Perin 1992; Murtas and Davis 2009; Lana et al. 2007).

These approaches to museum practice have put communities at the heart of the

museum and have given those people a voice in order to make them more responsible

and aware about who they are and what they can do in the world. They place museums

in a position where, using their knowledge, they could and should respond to issues of

the present as well as reflecting on the past and projecting into the future. They

highlight the need to include “community voices” along with those of experts when

representing issues of broad social concern. The concept of community involvement

draws strongly on ideas of participatory democracy.

What emerges from this vision is that museums, being a big source of

knowledge, have all the abilities to adopt an active role in contemporary society and to

be social agents of changes (Sandell, 1998; Balle, 2002; De Varine 2008; Anderson

2011). Here we use the term social agents to identify institutions able to develop

capacity building, itself defined as a continuous process in which all stakeholders have

the opportunity to participate. It aims, on one hand, to create an enabling environment

with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, and, on the other hand, to promote

institutional development, including community participation, human resources

development, and the strengthening of managerial systems by partnership working

(Cuthill, 2005). In other words, capacity building is the process by which individuals,

groups, organizations, institutions and societies increase their abilities to perform core

functions, solve problems, define and achieve objectives; and understand and deal with

their development needs in a broad context and in a sustainable manner(1).

In recent years the debate concerning capacity building has been enriched by

issues raised about the development of capacity building in non-profit organizations

and, through the actions of UNESCO and ICOM, in the field of cultural heritage

protection and development. Several authors(2) highlight that the cultural and social

sectors need to learn how to promote capacity building for at least two reasons. These

are, firstly, that there are increasing risks that economic resources will be eroded, so

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museums and heritage organizations have to define new strategies to encourage income

and, through partnerships, to share resources when necessary; secondly, heritage

organizations continuously need to reassess their aims and strategies in order to respond

to a society that changes day by day. Being able to achieve both these objects requires

increased management capacity.

Museums should be defined as social institutions when they not only assume

social responsibility or develop civil engagement practices, but also when they develop

strategies to develop capacity building in their communities. With this perspective, it

becomes evident that museums must reconsider their role and redefine their position in

the contemporary social system. They need to move from being perceived as a

storeroom for objects and specimens that are considered important by a handful of

scholars to being regarded as an institution with civic engagement. In order to survive

they must become a vital part of social system, moving beyond curatorship, education

and entertainment to actively embrace socially relevant missions. Attempts by museums

to be socially responsible and point the way toward a sustainable future have been

described by Janes and Conaty (2005) and Janes (2009). The vision of museum as a

social agent able to impact on society is also supported by Bennet (2005) who affirms

that museums could be a place of social experiments or civic experiments, akin to the

idea of the laboratory defined by Latour. Bennett states:

«The role that museums have played in mapping out both social space and

orderings of time in ways that have provided the vectors for programmes of social

administration conducted outside the museum has been just as important, playing a

key role in providing the spatial and temporal coordinates within which

populations are moved and managed. ‘Give me a laboratory and I will raise the

world’ is the title of one of Latour’s articles (Latour, 1983). This suggests, as a

rough equivalent, ‘Give me a museum and I will change society’ in view of the

museum’s capacity, through the studied manipulation of the relations between

people and things in a custom-built environment, to produce new entities that can

be mobilized – both within the museum and outside it – in social and civic

programmes of varied kinds». (Bennett, 2005)

In the light of these issues, the main aim of this article is to observe how a

museum (in this case, the Field Museum, Chicago) became an agent for social

development by recognizing its social responsibility, tackling a specific social problem

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and developing capacity building. The Field Museum’s Centre for Cultural

Understanding and Change (CCUC) and its Cultural Connection Programme (CCP) is

used here as a lens to observe the new challenges and new aspirations of museums, and

provides a platform to analyse how museums could be social experiments, tackling

social problems and triggering capacity building or capabilities development (Sen

1999).

In 1998 the Field Museum’s CCUC decided to promote a cultural connection

partnership in order to support smaller community-based ethnic museums. The main

aim of CCUC was to strengthen community-based institutions and the relationships

with communities in Chicago, and the Cultural Connections Programme (CCP) was

implemented as a major project to reach that aim. The stimulus of the Cultural

Connection Program (CCP) led to the creation of a new consortium, the Chicago

Cultural Alliance (CCA). This is a membership organization that aims to develop and to

implement a strategy to share economic resources and to strengthen inter-ethnic

relationships.

The next section introduces the methodology used in this research; this is

followed by a detailed analysis of the Field Museum Centre for Cultural Understanding

and Change (CCUC), its Cultural Connection Program (CCP) and the actions of the

Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA). The conclusions discuss what can be learnt from this

experience.

Methodology

This research adopted a case study approach which allowed an investigation of a social

process. The social processes analysed here are located in Chicago and concern some of

The Field Museum’s practices.

The decision to analyse the Cultural Connections Program of The Field Museum

Centre for Cultural Understanding and Change was made because of the organisation’s

commitment to develop new forms of capacity building that would benefit local ethnic

museums. Implementing this analysis required the use of qualitative methods: i.e. the

study of official documents (Field Museum 2004, 2005a, 2005b; Chicago Cultural

Alliance, 2008), and recorded interviews with CCP and CCA actors. The interviews

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were carried out from September 2009 to March 2010. People interviewed were:

Director Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; Director Bronzeville Children's

Museum; director of The DuSable Museum of African American History; the

coordinator of education program in Cambodian American Heritage Center and Killing

Fields Memorial; the coordinators of education program in Indo-American Heritage

Museum/Indo-American Center; an employee of Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and

Culture; the Director of Irish American Heritage Center; an employee of Italian Cultural

Center at Casa Italia; the coordinator of education programs in the Mitchell Museum of

the American Indian; the Director of the Polish Museum of America; the coordinator of

Swahili Institute of Chicago; the coordinator of education program in Swedish

American Museum; the Vice-president of the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art; the

coordinator of education program in the National Museum of Mexican Art; and

employees of Pullman Historic State Historic site/Historic Pullman Foundation. In

addition Rebecca Sanders (Director of CCA) and Rosa Cabrera (Urban Anthropologist

in CCUC and Coordinator of CCP) were key actors interviewed(3).

Each semi-structured interview took, on average, about 40 minutes. Being

explorative, they aimed to collect evidence concerning CCP and CCA practices and

purpose, and also to specifically probe how the museums and associated organizations

are tackling the challenges of contemporary society. Interviews were carried out

following a “structural guide” that allowed for an open and responsive discussion. Even

though each interviewee was met on only one occasion due to time constraints,

nevertheless it appeared that all had a positive attitude towards the program and the

consortium; they showed enthusiasm when an interview was requested and during the

interview they expressed real pride in their achievements to date and a commitment to

future actions.

The Cultural Connection Program in Chicago’s Field Museum as a lens for

observing new challenges for Museums

The Columbian Museum of Chicago was created in 1893, its purpose being the

accumulation and dissemination of knowledge and the preservation and exhibition

of objects illustrating art, archaeology, science and history. In 1905, the Museum's

name was changed to The Field Museum of Natural History to honour the

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Museum's first major benefactor, Marshall Field, and to better reflect its focus on

the natural sciences. The exhibitions remain the primary means of informal

education, supplemented by innovative educational programs.

In order to introduce new educational strategies, and reach new audiences,

The Field Museum has established a number of new Centres. Among these is one

oriented to the investigation of human social/cultural phenomena known as the

Centre for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC). It was created in 1993 to

strengthen relationships between The Field Museum and ethnic communities in

Chicago (Field Museum, 2005a). This Centre uses problem-solving

anthropological research methods to identify and catalyse the strengths and assets

of communities in Chicago and its hinterland. In doing so, CCUC helps

communities identify new solutions to critical challenges such as education,

housing, health care, environmental conservation and leadership development.

The Cultural Connections Program (CCP) was launched by Field Museum

CCUC as a pilot program in the fall of 1998(4).It was developed after a series of

nine conversations about race, culture and issues related to ethnicity, and identity,

held at The Field Museum’s CCUC from July 1995 to June 1996(5). The role of

the CCP was primarily to strengthen inter-ethnic relationships and to make

Chicago’s smaller community-based ethnic museums more effective fund raisers

and hence improve their drive to sustainability. The CCP’s assumption is that the

differences among people have been the source of some of the nation’s most

dangerous conflicts and misunderstandings. Despite the considerable gains of the

civil rights movement and subsequent social movements, structural discrimination

persists, as do indicators of prejudice. The program proposes that existing cultural

institutions in urban areas, i.e. ethnic community-based museums, are a significant

resource that can be used to address contemporary issues such as the sources of

cultural conflicts and the positive value of diversity. Providing a forum where

people learn and discuss issues with others in an open atmosphere, the program

offers a new role for museums (Field Museum, 2004) enabling the exploration of

cultural diversity through a series of comparative cultural events. It was felt that

people could learn more about their neighbouring communities through their

cultural organizations. The program wanted to stimulate people to hear "first

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voice" accounts, to examine museum collections, and participate in discussions

that clarify the reasons for cultural differences and to appreciate those differences.

Ethnic museums and cultural centres are considered essential resources for

learning about diverse cultures and interwoven histories.

This program concentrates its attention on ethnic museums due to their

potential capabilities to work with local people, to weave social relationships, to

stimulate community-based projects and, in some cases, to trigger social

programs. Putting ethnic museums and cultural centres in dialogue with one

another in order to define strategies to make them more attractive to local people

and to visitors, aims to keep alive the different expressions of local culture in

Chicago, to stimulate experiments of outreach, and to help different ethnic

communities to organize themselves by capacity building.

In Chicago these self-organizing activities have resulted in the

involvement not only of ethnic museums, but other cultural institutions that serve

and support ethnic communities based on self-organizing activities.

The partnerships developed in CCP grew and continue to grow. In 2005,

the partnership included 21 cultural museums, heritage centres and historical

societies and started working on increasing its capacity through the formation of a

broader alliance of such institutions. With a planning grant from the Richard H.

Driehaus Foundation and additional support from Chase Bank, the partners

embarked on the development of the Alliance(6).

From the Program to the Alliance: The birth of Chicago Cultural Alliance as a

main result of the CCP

The Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA), established in 2007, is the main result of the

activities of the CCP. It is a growing consortium, currently (2013) of 21 ethnic museums

and cultural centres that aims to put ethnic museums and cultural centres in dialogue

with one another in order to create strategies to make their actions more trenchant.

The main idea is that individually, small ethnic museums and cultural

institutions may have limited capacity, but together they can make a significant impact

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on regional and national policy, create a citywide resource for cultural tourism, leverage

collective assets and resources, and assert their perspectives in shaping cultural and

civic policy. The mission of this consortium is to serve as the public voice and convener

of local community-based ethnic museums, cultural centres, and historical societies in

partnership with external institutional stakeholders. It promotes the value of cultural

diversity as a powerful asset for local communities through public/private partnerships,

advocacy, public education, and tourism (Chicago Cultural Alliance, 2008).

The first step in the development of the Alliance was to interview stakeholders

in the city of Chicago to determine the feasibility of this endeavour. The Alliance has

addressed these issues using three strategies: a carefully inclusive planning process, a

firm foundation of data gathered through assessment, and a commitment to distributed

leadership (Field Museum, 2005a). An eight-member steering committee—representing

six core member organizations and two partner institutions—met with Amdur Spitz

twice a month for a full year. The evolving plan was presented to the core members

every few months to keep stakeholders informed and solicit their input. Finally, the

Alliance developed strategies, including joint decision-making and collaborative

dialogue, in order to ensure distributed leadership among stakeholders. Today CCA is

comprised of two types of members: core members7 are community-based ethnic

museums and cultural centres; partner members8 include large museums like The Field

Museum, universities, libraries, public schools and governmental agencies. The Alliance

also has associates, non-member organizations, and individuals who may participate in

specific Alliance program or project9.

In terms of practices, the Alliance is carrying out three kind of actions: firstly it

stimulates fund-raising for new programs; secondly it distributes news concerning the

activities developed by members; and, last but not least, it promotes cultural debate on

topics regarding social problems or museum management capabilities. Concerning the

last action, the Alliance in 2009 has approved its “Civic Engagement Model”, which

emphasizes analysis, interpretations and the inclusion of Core Member communities in

public dialogue and debates. After implementing the model it started a program called

“Talking about” that brings together Core Member communities to discuss significant

contemporary issues, such as immigration, ethnic identity, climate change and health

care. In addition, the Alliance has implemented a program called “Building strong,

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Building smart: A capacity building series” that is a workshop series with the aim to

build Core Members' organizational skills. All these actions allow members to meet and

get to know each other, so promoting social capital and the development of institutional

capacity.

To conclude, it is possible to affirm that the main results of CCP and CCA

should not be regarded as simply practical outcomes related to the program

implemented, but need to be recognized as socio-cultural processes. The work of the

CCP and later that of the Alliance was implemented with the scope to promote social,

cultural and institutional capitals. How they were developed is discussed below.

Are museums developing capacity building?

The main aim of this section is to investigate how the CCP and CCA have promoted

capacity building - a continuing process where stakeholders have the opportunity to

participate - through a social process. Capacity building should create an enabling

environment with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, and, promote institutional

development, including community participation, human resources development, and

the strengthening of managerial systems through the development of partnerships

(Cuthill, 2005). It could be defined as social process based on the involvement of local

actors in order to develop shared aims for tackling new challenges by defining strategic

actions.

Implementing CCP was considered, by all institutions involved, to be a real civic

engagement experiment. Rosa Cabrera (2006, 2008) showed how small museums,

already close to local communities, could contribute to develop community ethnic

identity and stimulate the formulation of new strategies that directly lead the museum to

become a social agent. These small ethnic museums and cultural institutions became the

facilitators, reinforcing relationships with one another, and experimenting with new

forms of governance, management and stewardship. The process was, of course, aided

by CCUC and its Director Alaka Wali (2006), who wanted to improve the relationships

among ethnic museums and cultural institutions and their communities; she wished to

drive the building of new cultural policies that would give promote better inter-ethnic

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relationships in Chicago. In this regard, Rosa Cabrera also affirmed, when interviewed

that:

“The belief in the good work made by small ethnic museums with their

communities and the will to improve and to develop the abilities of these

institutions were the starting point of The Field Museum Program … We worked

very hard with all institutions involved, we organized meetings, interviews, focus

groups that took more than five years … At the end of the social process triggered

by CCP program, all institutions involved asked us: What can we do now ? How

can we use the knowledge acquired? The only answer was to create a consortium,

an alliance, able to organize activities, programs for and with them. The Alliance

was a big challenge, it is a big challenge still now”.

During the CCP and in the creation of the CCA, seemingly due to the clarity of

their declared purposes, no reference was made by interviewees to conflicts among

actors involved. Clear documentation did however mean that some institutions involved

in the CCP – including the National Museum of Mexican Art - decided not to continue

in the CCA, presumably being confident in their own future direction.

The attention given to issues closely interconnected with collaboration and

social conflicts among actors has grown significantly in the museum studies field

(Lynch, 2011), where the relationships among Museums and communities and the

relationships among people working inside the museums are investigated.

Perhaps surprisingly, in this case study, we make no reference to conflicts among

the actors involved. In our view this absence of conflicts relates closely to the clarity of

objectives set by the Alliance. It was created to disseminate news concerning the

activities developed by members, to develop activities for finding funds that can enable

new actions and to promote cultural debate concerning topics with social relevance. In

other words, the Alliance works with the aim to share knowledge, strategies for fund-

raising and financial resources among members. The clarity of common objectives has

been the cement for the collaboration between actors: it has reduced risks of conflicts, it

has helped partners to consolidate their own awareness about social problems and it has

permitted the growth of capacity building.

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Concerning capacity building, it is worth to underline that both the CCP and

CCA demonstrated that it is possible to develop capacity. Indeed, the main result of the

CCP was the building of the CCA, a tangible outcome of capacity building. The CCA

itself is now defining new strategies to stimulate capacity building, developing a series

of events - Building strong, building smart. A capacity building series - to define with

partners new strategies for the future. For this purpose, Rebecca Sanders (director of

CCA) affirmed that “the main aim of Alliance consisted in helping small ethnic

museums in finding more funds, in being engaged in a larger networks, in developing a

common agenda for evaluating their cultural heritage”. She also added “if you are a

small museum, it is very complicated for you to find funds for growing and improving.

Our aims are to help them in these activities, that means [the CCA] must also achieve

more”.

Ultimately, it appears that the CCA is providing significant added value directed

to members and providing the possibility to share knowledge and financial resources, to

learn new skills for management and to compare their activities with others.

This Alliance is, of course, not a unique example of consortia among museums;

the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is a worldwide network of “Sites of

Conscience” with broader spectrum. However, locally-based networks of museums -

especially those with diverse ethnic backgrounds and communities – are not common,

and not always as effective. The strengths of the CCA consortium emerges from the

opportunity to connect the knowledge and skills available in member museums in order

to remember the past, understand the present and project future activities. That is

exactly what CCA is doing. This tendency was expressed clearly during the interview

with Rebecca Sanders who highlighted many times that museums are very special social

institutions because they permit a unique, complex and very active relationship to past,

present and future.

Learning from this experience

The work of the CCP and the CCA demonstrates how museums could be centres for the

development of an enlightened sense of awareness of cultural issues, so contributing to

the improvement what Sen (1999) defines as “capabilities”. The Field Museum has

identified a relevant social problem - ethnic differences - and in order to facilitate the

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dispersal of cultural knowledge enabled this through its CCP program. CCP enabled the

exploration of cultural diversity through a series of comparative cultural events. The

program aims to get museums and cultural centres to know one another, recognizing

similarities, evaluating differences and appreciating them. But, above all, each minority

community has developed a new sense of pride in its identity. Each community is a

social force with its own unique cultural, environmental, social, and human resources.

The CCA consortium is carrying on the mission of the CCP and, independent of

The Field Museum, is building a social network among ethnic museums and cultural

centres. Their common objective is to improve cultural capital following a strategy

directed at sharing aims, developing fund raising efforts and utilising and promoting

local cultural assets. This strong interest by The Field Museum in ethnic communities

could have different interpretations. The first could be that promoting an interest in

ethnic communities in Chicago is simply driven by financial demands, a spatial

marketing operation to create economic benefits. It could be considered as a program

for defining new entertainment services addressed to the upper middle class and able to

produce financial advantages (Clark, 2002). In other words, The Field Museum before

and the Alliance later could be seen to have little interest in the development of social,

cultural and institutional capital but be more concerned that these smaller museums

should be financially self-sustaining and capable to produce opportunities for leisure .

From this perspective, the temptation is to regard this process as elitist, subjected to

local power and a part of the Chicago city plan for cultural tourism that aims to “utilize”

the diversity for producing new amenities directed to upper middle class (Clark, 2002;

Bowman P. and Betancur J. 2010). However, the second interpretation – from our

perspective the correct one - is that the Field Museum triggered the socio-cultural

process in order to create a sense of awareness about ethnic differences and to develop

capacity building, so contributing to society.

In the light of interviews carried out it appears that both interpretations are valid

– for small volunteer-led museums financial sustainability and social actions go hand in

hand. People working in ethnic museums and/or cultural institutions were very

motivated and enthusiastic to be involved, at the beginning in the CCP program and

later the CCA. However, they are very much aware of the advantages of networking for

15

small ethnic museums; for example, interviewees expressed this in the comments

below:

“we consider that the CCA gives us a good chance for improving our situation”

(Cambodian Institute)

“the CCP program was a good experience, especially for knowing each other”

(Swahili Institute)

“Small Ethnic Museums have many problem in finding funds; staying in this

networks means to have the opportunities to organize more activities” (Indo

American Heritage Museum)

“We need continuously to find opportunities for doing more and better. CCA can’t

solve any our problems, but it is a good help”(Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art)

“We enjoy being part of the CCA, we discover a lot of things that we didn’t know

before” (Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture)

The main advantage in being part of CCA appears to be the possibility of

improving their capacity, i.e. to achieve more. This can happen because together they

have a “critical mass”; as an impressive group of actors with a significance presence,

they have a voice, and together can impose their will. They can also share the efforts

required to organize events to attract more visitors and work together to seek additional

funding. Their aims are to combine their efforts to raise fund to promote their cultures

and their communities in order to implement new initiatives that will benefit society. It

seems that in order to deeply understand the meaning of this social processes, it is

relevant to focus attention on the aspects concerning the relationships among different

institutions involved rather than the relationships among museums or cultural

institutions and their own communities. The latter are under control of each institutions.

It appears that the development of capacity building is a very important step in

museum practices. Improving capacity building necessitates coordinating many

different kinds of activities at many levels, it is demanding in terms of time and money.

However, the benefits are great, enabling better and sustainable museum provision

across society. At a time of deep economic crisis, there are few opportunities to find

16

funds for culture. In this scenario, developing capacity for action, giving space to

creativity and unifying forces are a necessity.

Acknowledgments

Nunzia Borrelli wishes to thank the Fulbright Commission for the grant which enabled the

fieldwork in Chicago.

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1. There is no singular definition of capacity building. Over the years, ‘capacity building’ has moved from being a focus, to concern individual training, the development of institutions and recently a complex systems philosophy where individual capacities are linked with those of institutions and systems at large. Recent definitions emphasize the continuing process of strengthening of abilities to perform core functions, solve problems, define and achieve objectives, and understand and deal with development needs (Milèn, 2001). 2. De Vita and Fleming 2001; Milèn 2001; Connolly and Lukas, 2002; Light 2004; Marwell, 2004; UNESCO 2006; Anderson 2011. 3. Unfortunately it was not possible to interview Alaka Wali, the CCUC director only a brief informal meeting being held. . 4. There were eight founding partners: Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, The DuSable Museum of African American History, The Field Museum, Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, The Polish Museum of America, Spertus Museum and Swedish American Museum Center.

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5. This initiative was supported by the John Nuveen Company and the National Endowment for the Humanities and framed by the following questions: “What is pluralism in America? What is culture? What is diversity?”

6. Other grants come from Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development, The Boeing Charitable Trust, The Chicago Community Trust, The Field Museum, Fund for Folk Culture, Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, The Joyce Foundation, Peoples Gas, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. 7. Core members are American Indian; Arab American Action Network; Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture; Brazilian Cultural Center of Chicago; Bronzeville Children's Museum; Bronzeville/Black Chicagoan Historical Society; Cambodian American Heritage Center and Killing Fields Memorial; Casa Aztlan; Chicago Japanese American Historical Society Chicago; Chinese-American Museum of Chicago; Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago; Indo-American Heritage Museum/Indo-American Center; Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture; Irish American Heritage Center; Italian Cultural Center at Casa Italia; Korean American Resource and Cultural Center; Latvian Folk Art Museum; Mitchell Museum of the American Indian; Polish Museum of America; Swahili Institute of Chicago; Swedish American Museum; The History Makers; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art; Ukrainian National Museum. 8. Partner institutions are Changing Worlds; Chicago 2016; Chicago History Museum; Chicago Zoological Society - Brookfield Zoo; Chinese Mutual Aid Association; Jane Addams Hull-House Museum; North Park University Chicago; Pullman State Historic Site; Snapshot Chicago; The Field Museum; The University of Chicago - Center for International Studies; United African Organization. 9. The twenty core members that co-founded the Alliance have an annual budget of about $5 million and represent cultural and ethnic communities whose populations range from 3,000 to 3 million in the Chicago area. Core members provide leadership in their communities by offering cultural and educational programs, assistance to immigrants and youth, advocacy and gathering space. In addition, they facilitate unity and communication both within and between communities.