Center for Multicultural Cooperation
Multicultural arts and culture
The mission of the Center for Multicultural Cooperation (CMC) is to provide quality youth leadership and service experiences that connect generations, cultures, and communities. Founded in 1981, CMC has brought together 12-24 year olds from a variety of backgrounds and experiences for almost three decades. CMC encourages youth to becomd actively involved in the preservation of cultural stories and traditions through the use of participatory media as a teaching and communication tool. CMC aims to create a new generation of informed, skilled, and creative leaders who harness the power of media to preserve their community’s legacy and express their heritage and culture.
In 2011, a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program supported a project in which youth and adults created participatory media documenting Hmong culture and folktales. Interdisciplinary teams worked together with elder storytellers to conduct oral history interviews in Hmong, and produced short documentary videos with English subtitles. The digital stories combined narrative, images, and special effects into 3-5 minute videos highlighting folktales which are representative of Hmong culture.