Metro Nashville's arts department needs new leadership to move past chaos and repair harm

“Isn’t art supposed to be ‘nice’?"

I’ve heard this a lot since joining the Metro Arts Commission. While it's true that art and artmaking can offer solace and joy, art also confronts us with necessary and painful truths.

The current pain within the Metro Arts community may be pointing us towards these kinds of truths, but it feels palpable. In response, the commission needs to act decisively to initiate the restorative work necessary to move forward.

Equitable change will not be sustainable until we address the internal challenges we face. Our external initiatives will always be vulnerable if leadership is incapable of productive dialogue with all our stakeholders.

I do not believe our current director has the requisite capabilities to effectively navigate the current challenges, based on concerns raised during an Executive Committee meeting last November.

These issues persist and have yet to be adequately addressed.

Metro must end the chaos in the workplace environment

First, Director Daniel Singh was asked about delays in processing paperwork for new employees. This is just one example of administrative failures that have led to a “chaotic” workplace caused by a lack of attention to internal functioning.

Director Singh inherited a troubled agency. People of color in leadership positions are often expected to “fix” what is wrong in organizations and are scapegoated when they don’t. It would be unequivocally wrong for us to place this burden on Director Singh.

But what leaders are expected to do is to respond decisively in the present moment. Our expectations for a director must involve navigating basic administrative functions and common leadership challenges while creating an environment in which all employees can flourish.

A March external report by attorney Luther Wright found Director Singh twice violated Metro’s conduct code in incidents with staff.  But it also found that while other complaints were not violations of code, they were “related to legitimate complaints about his handling of operational issues and his leadership style.”

The new Nashville arts leaders must take a holistic approach

Second, Director Singh faced concerns over grant funding delays, revealing deficiencies in managing external relationships. Effective leadership unites diverse constituencies within an arts ecosystem. Director Singh's strategic decisions have instead further fractured our arts community and produced significant hardships for our smaller arts organizations.

I am grateful to Director Singh for consistently highlighting the historic funding disparities in Metro Arts. He has named a significant gap that the city needs to address: the inadequacy of support for individual artists. However, Director Singh was hired to be the director of all of Metro Arts, not just of a single initiative.

Finally, Director Singh was tasked with addressing delays in response times to Metro departments. This concern suggests deficits in communication skills and in understanding the requirements for sustainable change in government.

Achieving systemic change requires a leader who understands the constraints inherent to government and devises strategy through partnerships. The leader of Metro Arts must be capable of working productively with other departments to reform policies and procedures to the benefit of the community.

It is no secret that the relationship between the commission and the director is tense. While this should not be solely blamed on the director, the instability hinders our ability to work together. I believe the director uses the instability within the commission to avoid addressing our valid concerns.

Unless we commit to restorative work, the cycle of harm will continue. We need a director who wants to engage in generative dialogue about the future of the arts in Nashville. This approach offers us a nonviolent yet potent means to repair harm and uphold the voices of all members of our community.

I believe Metro Arts needs a new leader who can steer us in this direction.

Heather Lefkowitz is a Metro Arts Commission board member. She is a teacher, artist, and advisor to works-in-progress based in Nashville. She is a lecturer and leads advising for undergraduate students in the Department of Human & Organizational Development, Vanderbilt’s largest undergraduate major at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Additionally, she is a certified practitioner of Critical Response Process (CRP), devised by choreographer and MacArthur Fellow Liz Lerman.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville needs a new Metro arts leader to move past chaos and heal