- 142 music venues
- 97 visual art galleries/museums
- 33 theaters & theater companies
- 19 dance companies & associations
While we aren’t New York or Chicago, Nashville is not an artistically deficient city. It would seem by the numbers that “making it” here should be relatively easy. But that never seems to work in practice.
If you’re an artist living in Nashville, 8 times out of 10 you’re waiting tables instead of songwriting or laying out real estate ads for the Tennessean instead of using your fine art degree for – well, for any of the reasons you spent 4 years (and 3 lifetimes worth of student loans) on art school in the first place.** There is so much untouched creative potential in Nashville – and yes, we know; potential by itself doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. (Although, a hill of beans would actually amount quite a lot if it were a hill of fair trade organic coffee beans…)
But what could happen if 8 times out of 10 that potential was actualized, if it was utilized as the tool it really is? What if the not-yet-professional artists left their garrets (or dorms) and shared their creativity with the rest of the community? What if artists from different genres and disciplines began working with the people who are trying to fix the problems in Nashville?
We think it could address serious problems with real solutions. We think it could make our city an even better place to live. We think it could change the world.
The Starving Artist Venture is an initiative of abrasiveMedia that establishes, enables and enhances local artistic communities through cross-genre collaboration, artistic forums and community projects. We could talk about the organic growth philosophy that governs our organizational development and explain why all this is really important, but you’d probably rather we just tell you what we’re doing this year.
- Just Cause: April 24th & 25th
* Numbers are based on results in CitySearch, Nashville Yellow Pages, and a handful of other “places in Nashville” websites. Numbers are not meant to be taken as census accurate data or used against us in a court of law for any reason.
** Numbers are based on absolutely nothing aside from the scores of people we know in that exact situation; names have been excluded from examples as they are based on real life scenarios. Similarities to real persons are completely intentional.
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