Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center

Welcome to the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center, a sweeping multi-cultural initiative that aspires to honor, validate, and support the spectrum of ethnic peoples who live in the mountains of the Golden Triangle, all the while inspiring national and international visitors who long to explore their long-established wisdom, customs, and worldview.

Who

The Cultural Crossroads Asia Foundation under the guidance of the CCA Board of Directors serves to ensure that its mission is true, its course is principled, and its implementation is clear, all encompassing, and conducive to our ethnic partners, guests, sponsors, and donors.  A collaborative Council of Indigenous Leaders and Future Leaders, together with a National and International Advisory Group, will offer counsel in the design and functioning of CCA initiative. (Please visit Our Family.)

What

Cultural Crossroads Asia is founded on two mighty pillars, with specific but interlinking missions and located in different settings. The Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center serves as a permanent living museum in Chiang Mai, Thailand, whose aim is to Preserve material culture. From this central hub radiate satellite Living Legacy Projects in mountain villages that serve to Sustain intangible culture. (Please visit Oral Tradition Schools.)

Our home base, the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center, is designed as an invaluable repository, dynamic showcase, and far-reaching social initiative created to collect, document, conserve, exhibit, and perpetuate the unique physical and oral culture of the numerous ethnic groups of Southeast Asia.

The CCA Heritage Center will offer guests multiple exhibits, services, and activities to make their visit memorable, including: Exhibition Halls for permanent and temporary displays; Community Space for concerts, presentations, and demonstrations; a Library that doubles as a Conference Room and Education Center; a Gift Shop showcasing the finest craftsmanship of ethnic artisans; and a Café featuring delicacies from the mountains.

The Permanent Collections of the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center originate from a vast cultural archive from the Songs of Memory Project that highlights the music, ceremonies, and culture of ethnic groups in the mountains of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and China. Amassed over two decades by documentarian and researcher Victoria Vorreiter, this comprehensive repository includes traditional textiles, musical instruments, and historical objects of the six major ethnic groups in the region: Akha, Lahu, Lisu, Iu Mien, Hmong, and Karen. (Please visit Collections.)

To bring the collections to life, Victoria has created a solid body of integrative documentation in the form of recordings, photographs, films, books, and multi-media exhibitions.  These collections and archives will expand as the CCA Heritage Center grows.

Why

The music, myths, and ceremonies that express a people’s worldview are the culmination of sustained, collective devotion, creativity, and effort. Such practices are robust in the way they have survived for millennia, but they are also fragile, for unlike monuments or places in nature, oral tradition is an ephemeral, intangible heritage.

In traditional animistic societies steeped in artifacts, songs, and spoken word, no written record of their history and beliefs exists. Rather they are imprinted in the memories of those who continue to live them. Regrettably, the material and oral traditions that were so vital in harmonizing their inner and outer lives a century ago are quickly and quietly vanishing as wise elders pass away and young generations leave their villages, foregoing the ways of their ancestors to navigate a wider, connected world that grows evermore uniform.

It is said that should one generation fail to pass on its knowledge to the next, millennia of accumulated wisdom may disappear in a few decades. If we lose these, we also lose a part of the richness of our shared humanity.

Cultural Crossroads Asia pledges to bear witness to the majesty and diversity of the time-honored cultural heritage of the traditional peoples of the Golden Triangle.

Where

CCA is beyond excited to establish its home in Chiang Mai, the largest city of northern Thailand, known as a vibrant center of historical and cultural awareness—social, educational, artistic, and spiritual—as well as of commercial enterprise.

Importantly, northern Thailand, situated at the base of the Himalayas amidst mountains, forests, and fields, is also a thriving cultural and historical intersection that harbors a staggering number and variety of some of the world’s oldest civilizations.  Each of the over 130 groups and subgroups that live in remote hill villages has effectively safeguarded its individuality, and, as a result, represents a unique world, distinctive in features, language, faith, customs, dress, and arts.

Truly, the Golden Triangle is one of the most culturally-rich places on the planet, making the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center perfectly poised to welcome and represent such a diversity of people, and to introduce their extraordinary stories to all who visit from near and far.

When

Like the songbird who builds its nest ‘branch by branch,’ or Emperor Hadrian who built his wall ‘brick by brick,’ CCA is building this worthy center ‘step by careful step.’

Many puzzle parts are already in place. Our collections and documentation of musical instruments and textiles are waiting to be displayed. The Akha Oral Tradition School, the first of our Living Legacy Projects in mountain villages, is well established and in full swing.  And awareness and momentum of the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center is growing.

CCA’s next course of action is to manifest a physical home and the funds to make it happen.

So, if this endeavor makes your heart beat faster, we would be thrilled to have you join us and most grateful for your support, which will only hasten turning our vision of the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center into reality.