Nashville’s creative community is built on collaboration and partnership. What makes this city remarkable is not just the depth of talent across disciplines, but the way artists, nonprofits, businesses, and neighbors consistently show up for one another. Collaboration and partnership here are not buzzwords. They are infrastructure. It is how ideas grow into movements, how artists create and access opportunity, and how creative work strengthens the entire region.
As Nashville prepares to host the Artists Thrive Summit taking place March 24-26, a multi-city national gathering centered on connection and creative resilience, we are highlighting two expressions of that spirit: the local sessions that will bring our community into conversation this month, and reflections from artists, partners, and member organizations who model partnership and collaboration year-round.
Together, these voices and initiatives reflect a shared truth: when we work across organizations, disciplines, and sectors our impact multiplies. In this month’s 20 for 20, we’re celebrating the spirit of partnership and collaboration that continues to shape Nashville’s creative future.
“Partnerships are essential to the strength of The Forge Nashville and our nonprofit arts industry. When organizations collaborate, we share expenses, expertise, and infrastructure — making programs more affordable, diverse, and accessible while expanding our collective reach. By working together, we grow audiences, and create real job opportunities. Over time, these collaborations have strengthened Nashville’s arts sector as a true industry — one that supports thousands of working artists, makers, and creatives across all disciplines. These partnerships contribute meaningfully to the The Forge Nashville’s cultural identity and economic impact within our city.”
Jonathan Saad, The Forge
Lessons from Nowville: Collaboration and Partnership in Nashville’s Contemporary Art Renaissance – Nashville’s contemporary art scene didn’t emerge from commercial galleries and institutions. It was forged through partnerships and collaborations among “art punks, art monks, radical students, and visionary pioneers.” Drawing from Nowville: The Untold History of Nashville’s Contemporary Art Scene, this presentation explores how DIY collectives, pop-up exhibitions, artist-run spaces, and cross-community alliances in the 1990s turned frustration with gatekept galleries and institutions into a thriving, inclusive contemporary art ecosystem. We’ll trace from foundational influences to modern adaptive collaborations, demonstrating how Nashville’s “infectious do-it-yourself spirit” can be a model for creative communities nationwide. The session includes storytelling, visuals from the era, and time for discussion on applying these partnerships today.
Joe Nolan, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Community partnerships and collaboration are essential to our work at Jazz Empowers. Because all of our jazz programs operate in underserved schools, strong partnerships with schools, venues, and fellow arts organizations are critical to both program success and student impact. By collaborating with performance venues and connecting students to other community-based jazz programs, we strengthen Nashville’s jazz ecosystem while remaining focused on launching and supporting sustainable jazz education programs in underserved schools.”
Andrew Johnston, Jazz Empowers
“Partnerships are essential to Daybreak Arts, expanding access, visibility, and opportunity for artists historically excluded from traditional arts spaces. By collaborating with galleries, businesses, corporate partners, social service agencies, and educational institutions across Middle Tennessee—including exhibitions in unique venues like the Lane Motor Museum (photo attached)—we secure highly visible exhibition opportunities, connect artists to new audiences and collectors, and provide transportation, supplies, mentorship, and paid professional development pathways that translate directly into earned income and career advancement for artists experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity in our community. Daybreak Arts serves as a bridge into mainstream arts spaces—helping shift narratives about who is considered a “professional artist” and who belongs in creative spaces.”
Nicole Minyard, Daybreak Arts
Reclaiming Power in Systems Designed to Drain It: A Creative Play Framework for Co-Creating Sustainable Artistic Work – Of course you’re being creative when you make your art. But here’s what could change everything: building your career, pricing your work, choosing partners, marketing, negotiating is also a creative act. When you apply creative play to your professional life the same way you do in your studio practice, everything shifts from burden to possibility.
Systems that were supposed to support creative work often drain power instead. Pay to play grant applications requiring “worthiness” proof. Organizations and venues extracting labor while keeping decision-making power. Career advice telling you to “build resilience” rather than addressing exhaustion. What if the solution isn’t fighting or surviving these systems, but recognizing you already have the creative problem-solving skills to redesign them and invite those systems to co-create something better?
In this interactive session, Stephanie Pruitt-Gaines introduces The Creative Mirror™ Framework, using embodied creative play to help artists identify opportunities to invest their energy more sustainably in their creative processes: making art AND making a sustainable career. Through teaching, hands-on activity, and dialogue, participants discover how the five stages of the creative process reveal where we might be at most risk of burnout and how playful approaches transform career-building from drudgery into joyful creative design.
Stephanie Pruitt-Gaines, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Community partnerships and collaborations are essential to my artistic practice. With my collaborators across nonprofits, for-profits, government entities, and schools, we blend local community stories, art, science, technology, and business for a multi-lens view of Nashville’s urban problems, so we can foster and communicate community solutions. With a diverse team of supporters and partners, I create art and art activations that benefit our community in meaningful, tangible ways.”
Meg Jordan, Artist
Building Stronger Support Systems Through Deeper Relationships and Intentional Collaboration – Communities thrive when support extends beyond a single transaction. This session explores how arts organizations, nonprofits and their leaders can strengthen their support systems by inviting people to contribute more than money including time, talent and advocacy. Grounded in real-world examples and guided reflection, participants will examine how fundraising and sustainability can be re-framed as relationship-driven, partnership-based practices. The session emphasizes storytelling, trust-building, and collaboration among participants. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for deepening engagement with existing networks, opening new doors to partnerships and donors, and cultivating support systems that enhance community awareness while strengthening the people and organizations invested in this work.
Charles “CF” Callihan, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Collaboration is central to our work at the Curb Center. Our annual art and creative writing exhibition in partnership with Gilda’s Club Middle Tennessee and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center showcases the talent and creativity of individuals whose lives have been impacted by a cancer diagnosis. Together, our work highlights the power of creativity to be a catalyst for expression, healing, and understanding. Stay in touch with the Curb Center to learn more about this summer’s exhibition!”
Leah Lowe, Curb Center
Block Breaker: Facing the Wall – How do innovators push through mental, emotional, and creative blocks to reach the full potential of a project? Join us for a craft class with poet laureate, actor, and international artist Cameron L. Mitchell, whose latest book Breaking the Block: Building a Path to Write the Story offers strategies for overcoming writer’s block while nurturing emotional intelligence, mental wellness, and literary craft.
In this one-hour craft talk, Cameron will share practical techniques for overcoming tedious obstacles and unlocking your creative flow. Participants will engage in thought provoking discussion, creative writing activities, and a guided opportunity to share their work.
Cameron L. Mitchell, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Nashville, like all other cities in the South, relies on partnerships to sustain movements where philanthropy will not. Without those traditional financial gatekeepers to dictate which work is possible, the only sustainable work is that which is carried out by the actual members of the community and responsive to our own needs. My work as an artist is to create space for competing visions of the past, present, and future of our community, so we can be prepared to collectively carry the work we’ve inherited.”
Stephen Joel Watts, Artist
Experience the Magic of Group Collaboration through Songwriting – Every day in writers rooms across Music City, thousands of songwriters and artists gather together in groups of 2-4 people to co-write songs. In this session, participants will get to experience the magic of that truly collaborative creative process by writing a full song together in 45 minutes, facilitated by professional songwriter Anne Buckle on guitar/voice. The last 15 minutes of the 60-minute session will be spent gathering reflections from the participants on their experience, hearing insights on the power and magic of collaborating in a group on an artistic project, in this case, doing some Music City-style songwriting.
Anne Buckle, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“We’ve built the Porch from the ground up on local collaborations with a diverse range of partners, including OZ Arts, Mending Hearts, Jackalope Brewing, Turnip Green, Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, Vanderbilt University and Belmont University, and many more. These partnerships help us spread the craft, benefits, and joys of creative writing all across Nashville; through them, we enact our belief that writing really is for everyone and that writers thrive in community. We endeavor to mingle our creative roots with others in the Nashville arts ecosystem as much as we can!”
Susannah Felts, The Porch
“Partnerships and collaborations are central to my work, both in my personal artistic practice and in the work we do at Unsripted. Improv itself is existentially reliant on building entire worlds together, and that principle radiates into all facets of my life. I rarely, if ever, accomplish anything by working alone. An ecosystem of healthy, reciprocal partnerships and collaborations is not only a more successful way of going about the work we do as artists in Nashville, it’s way more fun and interesting. And isn’t that the whole point of all of this?”
Emma Supica, Unscripted
The importance of art fairs, artist markets, and studio tours in fostering community engagement and economic opportunity for visual artists – This presentation will highlight the growing importance of art fairs, artist markets, and open studio tours in Middle Tennessee as traditional gallery and online sale models become more challenging. Drawing on years of experience as a self employed artist, serving on the board of Tennessee Craft, and helping found two neighborhood art crawls, Audry will explain how direct sales events create strong economic opportunities for artists while fostering meaningful, personal connections with audiences. These accessible, community-driven experiences not only break down barriers around art collecting but also serve as powerful advocacy for intentionally handmade art in a fast-paced, AI-influenced world.
Audry Deal-McEver, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Film may be a mass medium, but creating a local cinema culture in the communities we serve is vital to the mission of the Southern Oasis Film Festival. Our mission is accomplished through collaboration with participating filmmakers, community partners, and supporters across Sevier County. Together, we seek to bring the best in international indie film to Sevier County annually, and through our programs—like our agriculture film block and farmers market; our development program for artists with disabilities with the Franklin nonprofit, Backlight Productions; our student categories; and our new mobile movie theatre that takes classic Tennessee films to senior communities—we show our community that film festivals are accessible to everyone, not just the art cinema crowd.”
Jerod Hollyfield, Southern Oasis
Patchwork Partnerships: A Make-&-Take Collaboration Patch + Partnership Map – Nashville thrives on partnerships. This session uses a simple textile make-and-take to help artists and creative leaders design healthier collaborations—clear roles, shared value, and next-step outreach—so partnerships don’t stall or burn people out.
In this hands-on workshop, participants will create a small “Collaboration Patch” using repurposed denim and simple hand-stitching (no sewing machine required). As we stitch, we’ll use a guided framework to map real partnership opportunities—who we can collaborate with, what we offer, what we need, and how to make the “ask” with clarity and confidence. Participants will leave with (1) a finished patch as a symbol of shared work, and (2) a one-page Partnership Map they can use immediately to start or strengthen collaborations with community organizations, funders, educators, and creative peers. This session welcomes all disciplines—visual arts, theater, music, dance, writing, and multidisciplinary leaders.
Sandra Chandler, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Community partnerships are the heartbeat of our work at L.O.V.E. Academy. From collaborating with local organizations like Sangtuary, Pinnacle Bank, and McGruder Family Resource Center to the incredible support of Turik Cooper Special Needs Trust, Studio Bank, Metro Arts, and the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, these relationships help us expand access to the arts, skilled trades, and life skills for Nashville youth. Together, we’re building a stronger, more creative ecosystem that centers families and empowers the next generation of leaders.”
Kim Albritton, LOVE Academy
Activating Your Arts Ecosystem: Let’s Build a Movement Together! – Creatives don’t thrive in isolation—they thrive in ecosystems. This interactive fireside chat and working session invites participants to collectively map Nashville’s arts ecosystem and explore how artists, organizations, leaders, funders, and cultural influencers can move from fragmented efforts to a shared, activated movement. The session begins with a real-world case study of ecosystem-building work—why it was designed, what worked, what didn’t, and how intentional collaboration creates systems-level change. The session culminates in collaborative table discussions, where attendees co-design early ideas for a movement rooted in Nashville’s arts community, emphasizing shared leadership, collaboration, and sustainable impact. This is not a theoretical conversation—it’s a live ecosystem-building exercise designed to spark momentum beyond the room.
Fireside chat moderated by Kamilah Sanders (Founder & Ecosystem Strategist, Greater Than Equal Institute), with featured guests Megan Jordan and Evan Brown, Artists Thrive Summit Nashville
“Building community is a key pillar of Equal Access, an mtheory initiative designed to empower artists and managers from historically excluded demographics in country music through financial resources and industry connections. Our mission is strengthened by collaborating with aligned programs like Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country and Holly G’s Black Opry, as well as the immense support from Nashville’s broader music ecosystem, including labels, DSPs, and trade organizations. Within our own cohorts, these partnerships foster a vital support network where members co-write, perform, and grow together, ensuring no one has to navigate this industry alone.”
Tiffany Provenzano, Equal Access