The key question that caused chaos at Metro Arts in 2024

2024 has been a rough year for Metro Arts. The agency lost its executive director, faced scrutiny from other city agencies, and is months behind in distributing grant money. Much of this drama stems from a debate about who Metro Arts should serve with its limited budget.

The debate can be summed up like this: should Metro Arts focus its grantmaking on individual artists or arts nonprofits? The issue has divided Nashville’s arts community.

Former Executive Director Daniel Singh publicly sided with those who preferred funding individual artists. Compared with arts nonprofits, individuals are less likely to have previously received public funding, and more likely to be people of color. It was part of his larger plan to create a new, antiracist model for arts funding.

“What we know as the arts is a very Eurocentric approach, right, universal neutral, and all of those things are not how the global majority communities practice it, right?” Singh said in an interview with Nashville Public Television. “It’s very place based, it’s based on a practice, it’s for harvest festival, it’s for naming a child, it’s your grandmother’s recipe, it’s your uncle weaving.”

To accomplish his goal, Singh expanded the Thrive program, which funds independent artists and projects.

Princella Smith

“Walk in the Light” is an animated short by Nashville filmmaker Princella Smith. It tells the story of Raymond Washburn, a blind snack bar owner who saved five people during the 1993 Oklahoma City bombing. Smith used Thrive funding to finish her film.

But doing this meant taking funds away from large, established organizations like the symphony and the Frist Art Museum, which have traditionally gotten the lion’s share of the Metro Arts budget. Some in the arts community felt that was a mistake. Large organizations support smaller ones and hire local artists. Some of the pushback even came from members of Singh’s own staff, including former grants manager Jonathan Saad.

“Is it a better use of funds to take, say, $20,000 and give it directly to an artist, or is it better to take that $20,000 and give it to an organization who is funding 100 artists and serving thousands?” Saad said.

Singh resigned as Metro Arts director after his relationship soured with staff and with other city agencies, like Metro Legal. But the question of how Nashville’s public arts funding should work is still causing trouble for the agency as it determines its grant funding plan for this fiscal year.

First, Singh’s expansion of Thrive caused the program to be scrutinized by Metro Finance, which determined that it was illegal, since city grant money can’t be given to individuals. This year, artists applying for Thrive will need to partner with a nonprofit fiscal agent. Some see this as a positive – making it easier to track how public money is spent. Others, like arts nonprofit leader Nicole Minyard, see it as censorship.

“The fiscal sponsors, they have the power to decide what art gets created, what is art, what art is valuable,” Minyard said.

Second, Metro Arts has had to decide how much of its grant budget goes to Thrive, and how much goes to General Operating grants for arts organizations. In the end, the Arts Commission decided on 60% to operating and 40% to Thrive. If that plan gets through Metro Council in January, Metro Arts will start all over again developing a grants plan for the next fiscal year.

Right now, Nashville spends about .16% of its budget on arts. If the budget doesn’t increase, the debate about how Metro Arts should spend its tiny pot of money is likely to be just as intense in the years to come.