Alliance Matters is an editorial collaboration between Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA) members, focused on their audiences in Chicago’s diverse communities. This collaboration builds on Chicago’s rich tradition of collaborative, community-driven storytelling.
Photo Credit: Tafari Melisizwe
With support from the Field Foundation and insight from CIMA newsrooms and organizations, Alliance Matters is designed to elevate the role of independent media in informing, engaging, and empowering our city’s diverse communities while growing our pool of trained freelancers.
Its robust programming schedule includes print, podcasts, partnerships, news, arts, research, video, photography and more. Additional funding comes from the Leaders for a New Chicago Award to offer a maximum of fourteen $4,000 micro-grants, including $600 for a freelancer to work with the outlet, as well as marketing and engagement.
This first pilot's theme is “Temperature Check” on the health of your community, and participants have the flexibility to determine the activities, events, and content, and how they align with the theme.
Please join us in congratulating this year’s awardees and follow their program and content contributions.
Programming for Alliance Matters will run July - September 2025.
Temperature Check through Field Canvassing
SEPTEMBER 18, Release
Cornered: Black Chicago, the Crossroads of Jobs, Housing and Survival
SEPTEMBER 18, Release
Move Out Fear And Change the Narrative, Together
Dziennik Zwiazkowy - Daily News
White and Undocumented
The Narrative Power of Black Storytelling
La Villita - In Community Through Chaos
SEPTEMBER 7, Zine Release
SEPTEMBER 12, Radio Release
Homeless on Chicago’s North Side: Warm Welcome or Cold Shoulder?
SEPTEMBER 3-10, Release
Lumpen Radio, an initiative of Public Media Institute
The Memory Project (Collaboration)
AUGUST 11 and Week of SEPTEMBER 15, Radio Release
Taking the Pulse of Chicago’s West Side
Taking the Pulse of Chicago’s Black Visual Artists in a Shifting America
Content creation in the CIMA and Freelance Community
AUGUST 16, Black Storytellers Event
Quantum Entanglements: Communities Fight for Health and Power in the Residue of the Steel Mills
SEPTEMBER 20, Release
The Memory Project (Collaboration)
OCTOBER 2025, Release
Staging Survival: Theater, Sounds of Survival: Music, The Art of Survival: Art/Museums, Words of Survival: Lit/Books
JULY 10, The Art of Survival preview
SEPTEMBER 3, Release
SEPTEMBER 17, Release
OCTOBER 1, Release