Cultural Crossroads Asia
Summer 2025 Newsletter
What an astonishing – and consequential – Summer Quarter this has been for Cultural Crossroads Asia with the launch of two impactful initiatives that perfectly align with our mission: Preserving Culture, Sustaining Lives.
Living Legacy Films
Cultural Crossroads Asia You Tube Channel
Museum Curatorship Course
Akha Heritage Center
As the Akha Oral Tradition School celebrates its second-year anniversary, we trust these CCA outreach projects, designed to safeguard collective memory, will inspire generations of Akha, along with those in the wider world, to learn from and pass on ancestral wisdom that has informed people for millennia, before it quickly, quietly disappears.
Living Legacy Films
Akha Oral Tradition School Concert
On 24 February 2024, after eighteen weeks of inspirational teaching by six Master Akha Musicians and dedicated practice by their twenty-two Akha students in the Akha Oral Tradition School, the youth presented their first public concert in Ban Saen Suk, Chiang Rai, Thailand.
This twenty-minute video takes viewers on a journey from their first lessons in singing, dancing, playing and making musical instruments to this performance, as they renew the traditional heritage of their ancestors – practices the majority of Akha no longer remember.
The accomplishments and poise the young people demonstrated that fine day made everyone's heart beat faster with joy. We could not be more proud of these young Akha musicians.
Please enjoy the students' first-ever public performance:
Series 1: Akha Wind Instruments
Nine Educational Films
The Living Legacy Project has devoted its first Film Series to traditional Akha Wind Instruments, introducing viewers to nine musical instruments now rarely heard in the mountains of the Golden Triangle – the Chudu End-blown Horn, Yaja Side-Blown Horn with Reed, Pipa Leaf, Jabo Bird Caller, Meli Side Flute, Hulupeu Whistle Flute, Bawlaw Central Embouchure Flute, Chulu End-blown Flute, and Meli Melo Reed Pipe.
These films, spoken in Akha and subtitled in English, feature the six Master Akha Musicians who grace the Akha Oral Tradition School – Athu Pochear, Abiya Pochear, Miju Manpo, Apa Ayii, Mawleu Jupoh, or Asaw Jotaw — as they skillfully perform, describe, and craft their instrument.
To hear traditional Akha music, please visit:
Series 2: Student Videos on Akha Culture
Six Videos by Students of the Akha Oral Tradition School
The second series of six short films is the remarkable outcome of a Digital Storytelling Course that Clare Lyons, a former senior producer for BBC World News and a specialized trainer, offered to Akha youth of the Akha Oral Tradition School in February 2025.
Over five days, Clare trained our students, aged 12 – 16, in mobile phone techniques; photo, video, and audio documentation; visual story-telling; and interviewing skills. This provided them with basic knowledge to 'go on location' as independent filmmakers to collect footage for their chosen subject rooted in traditional Akha culture.
By editing their shots in a meaningful sequence that turned their drawn storyboards into video stories, and by adding interviews, captions, transitions, and a soundtrack, these young filmmakers created charming vignettes that recount Akha Broom-Making, Martial Arts, Medicinal Plants, Textiles, Red-Egg Rite, and Cooking.
To explore these delightful six videos, please visit:
Cultural Crossroads Asia YouTube Channel
As the transmission of ancestral oral tradition is no longer limited to the personal encounters of yore – father to son, mother to daughter, musician to student, shaman to apprentice – it is exciting for Cultural Crossroads Asia to explore new possibilities.
So, as a way to expand the reach of the Living Legacy Project, sharing the ephemeral arts of songs, stories, and musical instruments with the ethnic diaspora of Southeast Asia and followers around the world, we are delighted to announce the launch of the new virtual home:
Please visit our CCA YouTube Channel.
Subscribe to keep up to date!
Museum Curatorship Course
With Fulbright Scholar Dr. Lisa Roberts
Cultural Crossroads Asia is deeply honored that the prestigious Fulbright Educational Foundation recognized our proposal to launch a Museum Curatorship Course in an Akha village in northern Thailand as worthy of support. Its generous grant allowed CCA the golden opportunity to collaborate with Fulbright scholar Dr. Lisa Roberts, a museum professional who has contributed to cultural institutions around the world for forty years.
Over the course of five weekends in May and June 2025, Lisa shared her vast knowledge in the fine art of protecting material and oral heritage with a class of twenty-two Akha youth from the Akha Oral Tradition School in Ban Saen Suk, Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Lisa's insights inspired these Akha youth to consider the vital importance of cultural preservation as a way to maintain age-old Akha wisdom, communal coherence, and personal identity in the face of an ever-changing, multi-cultural world.
Following a clear, cohesive, step-by-step curriculum, Lisa introduced principles of building and caring for a collection, documenting and photographing artifacts, designing detailed storyboards, planning and crafting display mounts, and exhibiting collections in a cogent, polished, and stimulating display.
In the end, the students of the Akha Oral Tradition School pulled off a Miracle. . . For the culmination of the course, they were challenged to create five exhibits of Akha culture in a matter of weeks, highlighting traditional Akha Hunting and Fishing, Music, Textiles, Basketry, and a Hearth. All this after having never before seen a museum!
Furthermore, the students were tasked with showcasing their cultural treasures for an audience of Akha villagers in Ban Saen Suk who had no concept of conserving their family heirlooms in a permanent 'home.' This course had a life-affirming ripple effect throughout the whole Akha community. A Miracle, indeed.
We are most grateful to Dr. Lisa Roberts for sharing her knowledge with us, and to the Fulbright Educational Foundation for sponsoring her residency.
To discover more about this initiative, please visit:
Akha Heritage Center
Ban Saen Suk, Chiang Rai, Thailand
Concert
It was with great fanfare that Akha Students, Teachers, Leaders, and the Community of Ban Saen Suk welcomed visitors from far and near to the vernissage of the Akha Heritage Center on 29 June 2005. To celebrate, all in attendance were first regaled with traditional Akha music – performed in song and on musical instruments made of buffalo horns, bamboo, wood, and leaves – by students of the Akha Oral Tradition School, a splashy lead-up to the cultural wonders that awaited.
Launch of the Akha Heritage Center
Five Exhibits on Akha Traditions
The pinnacle of this day, however, came when students of the Akha Oral Tradition School unveiled five uniquely conceived, creatively mounted, completely charming exhibits – exploring Akha Hunting and Fishing, Music, Textiles, Basketry, and a Hearth, based on their new skills learned over ten-days during the Museum Curatorship Course led by Dr. Lisa Roberts. And so, the Akha Heritage Center was born.
Each collection was also professionally archived, thanks to Victoria and Lisa, with exhibit names in English and Akha, fulsome text panels in English and Thai, illustrative photographs big and small, artifact descriptions, and QR codes that lead to the Living Legacy Videos on our Cultural Crossroads Asia YouTube Channel. Each component made the collection come alive. In the end, however, the magic came from the ingenuity of each display, for each has its own special brand of wonder. . .
We would like to express heartfelt gratitude to those who helped launch the Akha Heritage Center: the Akha Community of Ban Saen Suk; Leedo, Meedo, and Arlo Chemeu, dormitory directors; the Teachers of the Akha Oral Tradition School; Aryi Jupoh, the indispensable 'Akha Man of all Seasons;' Aryii Jutong, Master Craftsman; Museum Specialist, Dr. Lisa Roberts; and Victoria Vorreiter, Director of Cultural Crossroads Asia and Co-Director of the Akha Oral Tradition School.
Special recognition goes to Cultural Crossroads Asia for aspiring to protect ancestral culture and sustain the children's lives by sponsoring the Akha Oral Tradition School and the Akha Heritage Center.
Above all, massive thanks go to the Akha students of the Akha Oral Tradition School who proved to be extraordinarily resourceful, focused, energetic, and, above all, joyful. Students today. . . Curators tomorrow.
Akha Heritage Center
Gratitude Corner
Basketry Exhibit
Akha Hearth Exhibit
Hunting and Fishing Exhibit
Textiles Exhibit
Music Exhibit
Finishing Touches
Victoria Vorreiter and Lisa Roberts
Co-creators, The Akha Heritage Center
Thank you for Coming. . .
Hurry Back Soon!
Please enjoy the fruits of our collective creativity
as we celebrate the opening of the
Testimonials
19 July 2025
Hi Victoria,
I was traveling to visit Akha in Laos and have news for you that in Laos they have been following the music teaching work of the music project (Akha Oral Tradition School) and have spoken directly about your work, saying that you are doing a great job.
They are very supportive. It is really working for the preservation of the musical arts that CCA and Akha music teachers are doing with this project. They are cheer very much.
Athu Pochear
Co-Director, Akha Oral Tradition School
5 July 2025
Last Sunday I attended the grand opening of the Akha Heritage Center in Baan Saen Suk, a mountain village in Chiang Rai Province. Students of the Akha Oral Tradition School, a Living Legacy Project launched by Cultural Crossroads Asia, helped create the exhibits under the guidance of Fulbright Scholar and museum specialist Dr. Lisa Roberts.
American researcher, writer, and filmmaker Victoria Vorreiter is the driving force behind this remarkable project that aims to bring back and preserve oral traditions of the Akha people. The twenty-two Akha students showed their skills in a fantastic musical performance. What an unforgettable event!
Let's hope this project will inspire others to preserve the valuable traditions of other ethnic minority groups in North Thailand.
Frans Betgem
7 July 2025
What an honor it was for Tony and me to attend the opening of the Akha Heritage Centre at Saen Suk village. As always, the Akha teenagers' performance of their cultural music was moving. Congratulations and thanks to you all for your perseverance, collaboration, and hard work.
The young people's genuine passion for learning about Akha culture was evident by the quality of their exhibits, which were brought to life as they proudly explained the displays to guests. Thank you, Victoria Vorreiter, for driving this project and inviting Dr Lisa Roberts to share her expertise in museum curatorship.
To all the Akha elders and leaders, especially Leedo and Arlo, gulung guma deh. What a fabulous legacy this is for Akha people.
Dr Lorel Mayberry President
Borderless Friendship
Western Australia
Gratitude to our Sponsors
As an independent documentarian and believer in the sanctity of cultural traditions, I remain steadfast in the vision of setting up a permanent CCA Heritage Center in Chiang Mai and Living Legacy Projects in ethnic communities. Yet this much remains true: 'It takes a village.'
So, to the many of you who have helped Cultural Crossroads Asia flourish brick by brick, or rather 'bamboo by bamboo,' over the years, please let me express how deeply meaningful is your trust and support.
CCA is a part of your Living Legacy, too. And we are most grateful.
Individual Donors
Of the Living Legacy Project
Semester 4
(April – August 2025)
Krüger Foundation
Chiang Mai International Rotary Club
Sara and Terry Miller
Rimping Supermarket
Pranee Poontajuk
Jenny Bramell and Sten Selender
Leslie and David Bosch
For a Full Listing of our Individual Donors, please visit:
https://culturalcrossroadsasia.org/support/
Major Sponsors
Jim Thompson Foundation
Krüger Foundation
Purpose Earth
Chiang Mai International Rotary Club
Thai Textile Society
The Golden Triangle Gallery
To help CCA continue to develop worthy projects like these,
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