Metro Arts, an agency that has endured turbulence and controversy for two years, is under fire again as money promised to artists and arts organizations has failed to arrive.
Every year, Metro Arts awards grants to a range of entities, from independent artists to organizations as big as the Nashville Symphony. For both large and small organizations, these funds have become a vital — and expected — part of their budget. Going into the 2023-24 budget cycle, the agency attempted to make the grant process more equitable, allowing independent artists and small organizations to get a bigger piece of the pie. But organizations of all sizes are still waiting for their grant money, compounding already existing questions about Metro Arts’ strategy and management.
“I think maybe the lesson here is that no government funding should ever be depended on,” said Alan Fey, who handles administration for two small arts organizations, both of which have historically received Metro Arts grants. Multiple organizations confirmed to the Banner that they had not received their grants, ranging from $10,000 all the way up to six figures.
Operational grant contracts went out to organizations in mid-September. Those contracts said that organizations would receive 50 percent of their award first, and the other 50 percent later. At the beginning of November, Metro notified organizations that those contracts had been refused and would need to be redone. When organizations received a new contract, according to some organizations, it only specified that they would get 50 percent of the grant money they had been awarded and did not specify when, if at all they would be getting the other 50 percent.
More than a month later, organizations still have not received any of their funding despite the grant guidelines posted to the Metro Arts website stating that 100 percent of awarded grants would be distributed between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1. This has raised red flags in both the Metro Legal and Finance departments.
“I am working with [Finance Director] Kevin Crumbo to engage in some basic fact-finding and see why we have not yet completed that process,” said Metro Legal Director Wally Dietz.
The grant distribution responsibility ultimately falls on Metro Arts executive director Daniel Singh. The Banner reached out to Singh multiple times and did not get a response.
Confusion over strategic direction
These most recent questions about management at Metro Arts coincide with a confusing strategic direction for the agency, as some members of the arts community have become increasingly frustrated that money they have been led to believe is coming has repeatedly been yanked away.
“Despite ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ being evoked constantly in meetings and vision statements, no one I have communicated with trusts Metro Arts at all,” said Nashville Shakespeare Festival Executive Managing Director Isabel Tipton-Krispin in an email to the Metro Arts Commission. “Metro Arts has changed the community-driven FY23 grants policy which was voted on by the Commission in December 2022 (and still posted on the website, by the way) more times than I can count.”
The process began unfolding more than a year ago. In 2022, Metro Arts initiated a new community-driven process to determine the funding formula for 2023 grant awards. This came in the wake of high staff turnover in Metro Arts, including the departure of executive director Caroline Vincent following allegations of racism and a toxic work environment. Led by Vincent’s replacement, Singh, a group comprising independent artists and representatives from a range of arts organizations created a grant funding formula they believed would begin to make arts in Nashville more equitable.
Traditionally, large art institutions are awarded the lion’s share of grants, leaving little for small organizations and independent artists. The new funding formula would still provide those bigger organizations with the funding they had grown dependent on, but it would also begin the process of pushing more funding towards smaller organizations and independent artists, with the goal of gradually increasing equity over a number of years.
That formula was built around the idea that Metro Arts would seek and receive $10 million in the current budget. But there was also a backup plan — to prioritize organizations that had received funding in FY23 with the understanding that, while everyone wanted to give money to new organizations and small artists, immediately ripping away this funding from organizations that had gotten used to receiving it could be catastrophic for the larger arts community.
“I remember discussing the backup plan, saying ‘you know, we know that the backup plan doesn’t serve the ultimate goal of equitable funding,’ ” said Fey, who was a part of the committee that developed that formula. “But without this, how do we determine who gets the money when there’s not enough money?”
In the end, Metro Arts did not receive their $10 million request. But rather than go with the backup plan created by Fey’s committee, the Arts Commission adopted yet another new funding formula at their meeting in July.
At that meeting, the commission was presented with four funding formula scenarios. Each one was rated based on how equitable it was, and how much it would positively impact BIPOC applicants. The commission ended up voting on the scenario that was the most highly equitable and would have the most impact on BIPOC applicants, despite concerns raised at the meeting that a recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action could make that funding formula illegal.
This formula left Fey’s two organizations receiving big awards. But Fey said that while he was happy about that, he was concerned that because the big organizations would not be receiving much funding, they would not come back in the future to lobby for more arts funding, which in turn would cause the grant pool to shrink.
“It feels like Daniel’s trying to break the system of historic funding,” said Fey. “And that’s great. Somebody was saying to me, ‘What’s the philosophy? Break the system and rebuild.’ But it feels like he doesn’t want to do the rebuild step.”
A month later, the concerns raised proved valid: A July 25 memo from Metro Legal Associate Director Lora Fox informed the Commission that they needed to vote on a new funding formula, saying that “race may not be used as a way to distinguish between applicants.” So in August, the commission finally voted on the current funding formula. Fey said that formula more closely resembled the backup plan his committee had come up with, giving organizations that received money in FY2023 the same amount, and cutting Thrive funding, which goes towards independent artists by 50 percent. This change was catastrophic for many artists who were supposed to receive that funding.
“These artists have real insecurities,” said Elisheba Mrozik, an artist based in North Nashville. “And you took $20k from them. That money is life-changing for poor people.”
Mrozik did not personally receive funding, but her organization North Nashville Culture Crawl did receive $10,000. Another member of her organization also received $10,000 for a separate event. But not only did the money come months after it was supposed to, it was only half of what they originally expected.
“If I hadn’t gone out and done more work myself and donated money to my org to help make the event go off then we wouldn’t have been able to do it,” said Mrozik. “And so many artists I talk to had to not do [their projects] at all. They lost money during the season where so many desperately needed it.”
Chasing equity with limited money
Many within the arts community feel they have been pitted against each other, with some independent artists and smaller organizations blaming the big organizations in Nashville for the situation. One group has even filed a Metro Human Resources complaint against the Metro Arts Commission, demanding an investigation.
“This agency is not fulfilling its mission whatsoever. There is a failure of leadership, which has eroded trust with both arts organizations (all of them, not only ‘larger organizations’ which I have seen repeated as a talking point) for not receiving their funding yet and independent artists who have filed a MHRC complaint against the agency,” said Tipton-Krispin in her email to the commission. “The house is on fire, and it has been for months.”
Conversations about the equitability of some of the biggest art organizations — The Frist Art Museum, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center to name a few — are constantly bubbling among the arts community, making the large organizations a frequent target. But Mrozik says that while many of those organizations may be inequitable, they are still important parts of the Nashville arts ecosystem at this time.
“If we are going to keep institutions, if we’re going to keep systems and stuff in place, it’s going to be a longer, slower change to make them equitable,” said Mrozik. “But just working with a few orgs that I have — maybe I’m just the one checking the DEI card, I don’t fucking know — but at the same time, I would not have had a lot of the opportunities that I have gotten without those institution names on my resume after being able to work with them.”
Mrozik doesn’t believe anyone is ready to “burn it all to the ground” — what she says would be required to create an equitable system. She hopes that instead, she can work to bring bigger organizations, small organizations and independent artists together under the common goal of securing funding for the arts.
“Instead of fighting amongst bigger and smaller arts orgs it really needs to be a unified collaboration of the organizations and individual artists fighting against the fact that nobody wants to fund the arts properly,” said Mrozik.
Metro Arts commission member Will Cheek said the kind of friction the arts community is seeing right now is almost inevitable without greater funding all around. He said that bringing Nashville in line with other cities would mean committing one percent of the Metro budget to the arts.
“That’s what we should be focused on as an arts community,” Cheek said. “What I really hate is that we’ve got fighting over ‘what is equity,’ and we’re scrambling over money, when we should really be pulling together as an arts community. And we should be getting more money for the arts. We can do a whole lot of equity if we’ve got more money.”
The situation has taken its toll on the commission, with multiple vacancies created as members have resigned, including the recent chair, who lasted just one meeting.
“I had a super stressful meeting two weeks ago,” musician Ellen Angelico told the Banner. “And I was just like, ‘This is too emotionally intense for me as a volunteer,’ and, you know, [I] had to prioritize my mental health and my relationship. And yeah, I just sort of reached my limit.”
Angelico resigned last week.
“I don’t have the knowledge to oversee a $6 million Metro department, and that’s the position I found myself in,” Angelico said. “What needs to happen is really basic structural stuff, because otherwise, we’re just gonna keep in a cycle of dysfunction.”