Is Nashville committed to equity? Arts funding controversy draws scrutiny

Multiple members of Nashville's arts community, advocates and a third-party study of the last decade of Metro Arts grants say there is a clear problem with how the city doles out its arts funding: Nashville hasn't gone far enough to support its underserved, minority artists.

And when it looked like those underserved artists might get a bigger slice of the pie this year, an overturned decision funneled the money back to groups that have historically received the lion's share of support.

The recent reversal of grant funding for independent artists and small arts organizations — several of whom are minorities and first-time Metro Arts grant recipients — spurred three formal discrimination complaints now being investigated by the Metro Human Relations Commission.

Meanwhile, logistical issues caused funding delays for those who were ultimately approved to receive grants.

The budget allocated to Metro Arts this summer fell short of the department's goal. A new funding model approved by Metro Arts commissioners in July would have set aside more money from that limited tranche for individual artists and small organizations, shrinking large grants historically awarded to larger organizations like Cheekwood, the Frist Art Museum, Nashville Ballet and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra.

The Metro Arts Commission rescinded its vote a month later at the advice of Metro's legal department, which said the commission's consideration of each possible funding formula's inclusion of communities of color could run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court's summer decision to end affirmative action in higher education.

Metro Human Relations Commission Director Davie Tucker said one of his department's concerns is the broader implications of Metro Legal's interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling.

"It has affected Arts. What other departments and what other processes is it going to affect? We need to hear that, and folks need to know that," Tucker said during a Dec. 14 meeting called to clarify the state of Metro Arts grants and pending investigations.

Tucker said the human relations commission will issue two reports, likely in January: one delving into the discrimination complaints from artists, and one exploring the situation's implications for Metro's more than 80 volunteer-served boards and commissions.

A lack of guidance from Metro's legal and finance departments on grant contracts and funding sources caused the delays in grant disbursement for those that did receive funding, Metro Arts Executive Director Daniel Singh said, though most grantees should now receive funding within 30 days. Dec. 14 marked the first time Singh has publicly answered questions about the funding formula decisions, complaints and funding delays — he was instructed by Metro Legal to not speak to the press, he told members of Metro Council.

Metro Arts' grant process is now being audited by Metro Finance. Singh, who took the reins in August 2022 with a "very clear equity mandate and anti-racist mandate," said he welcomes the audit to help identify ways to improve the grant process.

Metro Arts grants: What happened

The last several years have been tumultuous for Metro Arts — multiple employees of color left the department and former Executive Director Caroline Vincent departed amid allegations of racism and workplace toxicity, according to Metro records. By the time Singh arrived, the department had seen four executive directors in two years.

Singh said he was excited by Metro Arts' early creation of a committee on anti-racism and equity in 2015, long before other cities began to do the same. Upon arrival, he was surprised to find that the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who gave Nashville its "Music City" moniker, had never been funded by Metro Arts. And though Nashville has the largest Kurdish immigrant community in the United States, it was not well-represented in Metro Arts' funding portfolio.

Metro Arts began reworking its grants process to reduce barriers to entry. It eventually approved changes to both its application process and funding system.

The department launched a disparity study, but consultant RISE found that the number of minority-led grant recipients in any given year in the last decade was too small to run the statistical tests needed to make it a true disparity study.

"The disparity is greater than the model even imagines," the consultant's report states.

In December, Metro Arts told longtime grant recipients that if the department did not receive the full funding it requested from Metro, funding would continue at the level they received the previous year. This promise was a mistake, Singh said.

'A shimmer of hope' for underserved artists

The number of applicants rose significantly after the application changes. The department received 88 applications compared to around 55 applications in prior years, with greater representation from Black, Indigenous people of color (BIPOC). The department's Thrive grants, meant for independent artists and community-based projects, saw applications jump from 22 to 175, with 40% of those being BIPOC artists and 105 being women.

Taking into consideration marginalized and minority status, council districts, ZIP codes, application history, budget size and other data points, Metro Arts staff recommended that commissioners prioritize funding the Thrive grants and funding for organizations with annual budgets under $500,000. Race was not used to score grant applications, Singh said.

"When Daniel Singh opened up the Thrive application in a radical new way for the whole Metro government, I had a shimmer of hope that this could change Metro government and how it approaches communities of color who pay taxes to this government," said Lydia Yousief, founder and director of the Elmahaba Center.

Singh said he inquired about the Supreme Court's pending affirmative action decision in May but was not given any guidance to change grant recommendations.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. In July, the Metro Arts Commission approved the staff-recommended funding model, which would have the highest impact on minority artists in Davidson County.

Dozens of artists and organizations were set to receive funding for the first time, including Yousief's organization.

But the decision also set off alarms for bigger organizations that had drafted their budgets with the promise that they would receive the same level of funding as the year prior.

At the July meeting, Nashville Repertory Theatre Executive Director Drew Ogle said he had already hired for some positions based on that promise, which was adopted into Metro Arts policy in December. William Jeffries, vice president of development at the National Museum of African American Music, said reducing its funding would impact two exhibitions. Several other individuals spoke in favor of directing more funding to smaller organizations and artists that are less well-resourced and without broader fundraising bases.

Reverting to 'status quo'

Metro Arts Commissioner Will Cheek, an attorney who serves on several boards and frequently provides pro-bono legal advice to art institutions, said he brought concerns over the July vote's legality to Metro Legal.

"We were looking at a sheet that was breaking up the impact of different categories based on race, and the Supreme Court had just released a decision saying it was unconstitutional to base a decision like that on race," Cheek said at the Dec. 14 meeting.

Metro Legal ultimately agreed, and it recommended the commission rescind its July decision and vote again. Commissioners could have chosen a formula that closely matched the funding model they approved in July, without any mention of minority status.

Instead, they voted 8-5 to approve a model that adhered to the "status quo," protecting funding for Nashville's larger institutions, reducing funds for smaller organizations by about half and cutting funding for some public arts projects completely.

"After Metro Legal came back ... I think some of the commissioners thought about the impact of changing funding in a mid-year cycle for these organizations because they had gotten used to getting the funding and they were being cut from it," Cheek said.

The Elmahaba Center applied for $20,000 to fund four programs: youth art classes at the Southeast Library, sewing classes for Arabic-speaking women, the revival of the Tennessee Arab newspaper and the translation of a community member's anthology about moving from Egypt to New York City and then to Nashville.

It will only receive half of that money. Youth programs and the newspaper revival will have to wait, and Yousief must find other funding to complete the first Arabic-English anthology in Nashville.

"Because we were defunded very intentionally and with racist intentions … we were not able to fund many of these projects, and we are having to wait to see if there will be structural changes to Metro Arts to see if our people can apply for this funding," Yousief said.

The aftermath

Robert Jones is an artist who has a small framing and arts business in Germantown, serves on the North Nashville Arts Coalition board and works as an on-site manager at the 100 Taylor Arts Collective.

He applied for a public arts grant through Thrive to create a mural on the 100 Taylor building, which would be paired with the building owner's contribution of green space and public seating adjoining the Germantown greenway. Under the July decision, his $18,000 grant would be fully funded.

He made plans, lined up calendars and prepared to begin work in January. Then his funding was revoked.

Separately, the North Nashville Arts Coalition applied for grants for events and operational needs. One event in October was slated to receive $20,000, Jones said. Just a couple weeks before the event date, the coalition learned that funding would be cut in half.

"A lot of people went unpaid, and the event wasn't able to happen in the way it was supposed to," he said.

Jones knows and has worked with some of the current Metro Arts commissioners and had positive experiences with them. It was difficult for him to decide whether to sign on to a complaint filed to the human relations commission.

"Ultimately … the context of how that money was promised to low-income artists and then revoked, regardless of who's to blame, I think it was the wrong decision, and I think it's something that legally was wrong to do as well," Jones said.

When asked if Metro Legal has advised other departments, boards or commissions on the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling and its interpretation, Associate Director Lora Barkenbus Fox said in an emailed statement that the Department of Law "cannot provide specific advice that was given to clients."

"The legal concerns about the arts process were not based on collecting racial data or the race-neutral formula that was presented to the legal department for review," Fox wrote. "The concerns were based on overt statements and recommendations to implement certain funding plans in order to benefit certain races."

Singh said reverting to the status quo — larger organizations receiving the lion's share of grant funding — is not neutral, because it actively harms BIPOC artists and organizations who cannot benefit.

"We had used BIPOC as one of the criteria in deciding to prioritize Thrive and organizations (with budgets) under $500,000, which were predominantly women and minorities," he said. "We were told that could open us up to a lawsuit. But every decision has a lawsuit potential. Every decision has a risk, not just one direction, but the other direction."

'Fighting for crumbs'

One common thread between Singh, Jones, Cheek and arts advocates: They say fully funding the arts will help Metro move toward a more equitable landscape.

Jones wants it divided into separate pots so Nashville's low-income artists, small organizations and grassroots arts nonprofits don't have to compete with larger organizations for funding.

"Right now, we've been fighting for crumbs that are falling off the table," Singh said. "And if the Council and the mayor's office give us what we need for Music City, for Athens of the South, and really hold up arts and culture where it needs to be, then I think that will be the beginning of the trust building."

But building trust also begins with filling the multiple vacant seats on the Metro Arts Commission, which has seen frequent turnover in recent months. Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell recently appointed John Nefflen, a white attorney, to one of the open seats — a decision opposed by artist coalition Arts Equity Nashville.

"We are 100% committed to fair funding of the arts, and that includes a commitment to bringing more equity into the process of supporting artists who have traditionally been left out, but we can't sidestep the rules of the grant process, and there are legal guidelines we must follow," O'Connell said during a Dec. 15 press roundtable. "We know how frustrated arts organizations and artists have been at not receiving expected funds. I am frustrated by this, too, and we are trying to ensure an accountable distribution of funds."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Metro Arts reversal, funding model decision draws criticism, reproach