UNITED FOR CHANGE: NASHVILLE ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT COMMUNITY

Will Nashville’s Next Mayor See the Importance of Investing in its Creative Class?

By Jill McMillan Palm, Brian Sexton, Jamie Kent, Lucia Folk and Lisa Chader (Op-Ed published by The Tennessean on Monday, May 8, 2023)

It’s no secret that Nashville is a community steeped in creativity and overflowing with talent. In fact, Davidson County has the highest concentration of musicians in the entire nation, and there’s no scarcity of artists of other disciplines as well. It’s also no secret that our leaders have done a fantastic job of selling Music City that way for the last two decades. Just look at the Nashville Chamber’s website, where under the page “Why Nashville?” the words creative, music, and artistic are sprinkled throughout like rhetorical rhinestones hoping to catch the eye of the next Oracle.

But today, as costs of living soar and working-class artists still wrestle with the remnants of the pandemic, the creative culture that has been our calling card is facing a crisis. In fact, the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville (via its Creative Economy Survey in 2021) revealed that 25% of Nashville artists indicated they were not planning to stay in Nashville beyond the next 2-3 years, citing an inability to sustain a creative career due to: the rising cost of living; lack of accessible artistic infrastructure; and a perceived lack of support at both city and state levels.

As we look to elect our next Mayor, we are presented with an opportunity to discover if Nashville’s next leader sees the importance of investing in our creative class, and what specific solutions they would implement if elected.   

With that in mind, we believe it’s paramount that every candidate truly understands the issue, and how our city compares when it comes to investing in the arts. In 2013, a Chamber backed study reported the Nashville music industry alone accounts for roughly 56,000 jobs, $3.2 billion in annual labor income, and $5.5 billion to the local economy. Imagine how much it’s grown since then! Adding to that, nonprofit arts and culture organizations generate $429.3 million in annual economic activity in Metro Nashville, support 14,277 full-time equivalent jobs and deliver $51.1 million in local and state government revenue. However, Metro Arts only receives $3 million in funding annually from the city, a number that has remained nearly the same for more than 20 years, ironically the same amount of time that city leaders have been leveraging our creative culture as our selling point. As part of Nashville’s $3 billion dollar total budget, that comes out to approximately 0.1% for the arts.

Another fun way to look at that is through “civic investment in the arts” per capita. For Nashville, our government invests roughly $4.15 per person in the arts. Austin, TX invests more than double that amount, coming in around $9 per person. Same for Denver, CO. And for Portland, OR. Charlotte, NC tops the list, investing nearly $20 per capita in the arts.

So, grant funding for the arts seems like a clear first step for the next Mayor to address. But there are many other inspiring approaches that we can borrow from our peer cities, such as creating private-public partnerships to fund emergency relief grants and purchase historic venues, or allocating unused metro buildings to serve as campuses and incubators for the creative class. Countless cities have also launched offices and commissions to solidify a seat at the table for the arts in economic development discussions.

Will Nashville’s next Mayor recognize this culture crisis and the importance of intentionally investing in its creative class? Nashville’s ‘Music City’ brand may just depend on it. We look forward to finding out from the candidates themselves at the upcoming Nashville’s Mayoral Forum for Arts & Entertainment on May 10th.