The Metro Arts Commission convened on December 5, 2024, at 12:15 PM CST (18:15 UTC) to deliberate and vote on funding allocations, grant criteria, and policy updates. The meeting featured public comment, legal counsel regarding a conciliation agreement, and votes on operating and Thrive grant guidelines. No final allocation was reached due to loss of quorum.
As your chair, I want to help us get through everything today with respect and good thoughts and good deliberation. I'm just moving into this, and uh with that, we'll call the meeting to order. And I want to say that if you are a guest here and you want you want to speak, make sure that you do sign up in the back. Uh, Vivian, did we have anything online that we need to discuss before I read the land acknowledgement? Anything to pass out. Thank you. Thank you. It's okay. Thank you. Before we begin, we want to first offer a land acknowledgement. Please feel free to follow along on the screen as I'll read aloud. Metro Arts stands and holds space on the unceded and sovereign lands of the Cherokee East. U Chi and Shawnee peoples who've stewarded it for generations. Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will. Some were drawn to leave their distant homes in the hope of a better life, and some have lived on this land for more generations that can be counted. We acknowledge we are all standing on ancestral lands, and we honor the thousands of enslaved African peoples whose lives were physically and spiritually stolen. We pay respects to elders, past and present. Metro Arts invites you to join in our commitment and getting to know our native communities and more meaningful waves and deaf in excuse me in alignment with our rest of arts practice. Okay, moving into public comment, as we do every month. We want to regularly hold space for anyone. So at this point, I'd like to ask if anyone has signed up for public comment. Yes, we have three that have signed up. Um the first one is going to be Miss Terry Davis on behalf of Miss Alishaba Morozit Morzik. Sorry if I mispronounced that. Your time starts now. Good morning, everyone. My name is Terry Davis. I am the personal assistant to Alicia Bonrozick, who has done many murals, public art commissions, private art commissions, and lots and lots of nonprofit and community work in Nashville, Tennessee, Davison County. Um, so that's what I have to say today on her behalf. A fiscal agent is more work for an artist to navigate, especially given the ridiculously low budget. What procedures are in place if that fiscal agent doesn't release funds in a timely manner? Where can artists turn for help? The $5,000 flat fee for Thrive is a terrible idea. We are literally in the most expensive times of our lives, and the cost of everything is so expensive. Lowering the budget will make it almost impossible for artists to be able to provide a good project and also be able to pay themselves a living wage for the work they're doing. And you better believe that art is work. Supplies are very expensive. Time is expensive. One minute. Insurance is expensive. Renting space is expensive. You're making Thrive the opposite of what it should be, what it was designed to be. Thrive is an amazing stepping stone for me and other artists to learn how to work with budgets, learn how to work with institutions and actually be able to bring projects to life that we could never do on our own. Do you understand how life-changing 9500 was back in 2016 when I reserved my received my first Thrive grant? A community-based coloring book was created that was printed and distributed to thousands of people across Nashville with $9,500. And I could pay myself while actually doing the work and research, which was extensive and not worry about how I was going to pay bills during that time, so my kids and family didn't suffer because I was doing something important to me as an active member of this community. It was a huge success, and it's still required requested today. If someone wanted to do that today, it wouldn't be possible with $5,000. We've been to other cities and states, and we see how much they give to artists and creative endeavors, and we are far behind, and now we're going even further backwards.