Metro Arts Commission - Leadership Change Required

(This letter was emailed on Sept. 20, 2021)

Dear Chair Schmidt, Metro Arts Commissioners,
CC: Mayor's Office, various CMs, Metro HR Director, Nashville Arts Coalition,

If your house is on fire, do you wait for the fire marshal to complete their investigation before putting out the fire? No, you put out the fire.

If people living in your house have been telling the fire department that it’s been burning for three years and indeed telling them who has been responsible for setting the fires (or at least fanning the flames), do you ask the same fire department to conduct an investigation into who started the fire or to see if it was even burning at all?
No, you get a truly independent body to investigate since that fire department is conflicted (and clearly isn’t fully trained in fire prevention in the first place).

If you claim to care about fire prevention, have a committee dedicated to fire prevention, even teach courses and provide multiple resources promoting fire prevention in the community yet you fail to acknowledge that your own house has been burning for three years (or more), how much longer do you think the public will trust you on fire prevention? You've already lost my trust.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, but you get my point. Leadership at Metro Arts, this Commission, and Metro HR have known about these allegations for two to three years, why should the taxpayers (or indeed this Commission) trust the Metro HR investigation? They and you should have investigated immediately, at least as policy violations of Mayor Dean's Executive Order No. 008. They and you failed in your legal and ethical responsibility to the Metro Arts staff and the Nashville Arts Community. Metro HR clearly isn't well trained in anti-racist work. Much of this Commission clearly isn't well trained in anti-racist work. This requires a truly independent, third-party investigation. If the Metro Nashville Government is not interested in such a third-party investigation, I will work with the community to organize one.

I am grateful for the efforts by Metro Council’s Minority Caucus to hold you accountable and I am hopeful that they have the professional capacity and emotional bandwidth to continue their pressure on the Metro Arts Commission in a way that will lead to true transformation of this vitally important public service.

I don’t call for these actions lightly. I recognize the power dynamic of a male calling for the resignation of a female leader who may have had to work harder than I would have to get to her position. I also recognize the performative history of white people like me speaking more loudly than people of color when calling out racism. But I believe this action is a necessary step toward justice in our arts community.

There are many reasons that I hope that I am wrong in my opinions and beliefs in this matter. I hope that I have to eat my words and issue very public apologies. I hope the government records indicating abuse over three years were simply misinterpreted by Mrs. Ciccarone in her investigation. I hope the rumors about a toxic work environment at Metro Arts (which have circulated widely in the Nashville arts community for some time) are false. I hope the concerns of toxic and racist leadership by Vincent and others and the lack of leadership by this Commission, which have been bravely voiced in public and private by current and former staff members, are simply misguided or uninformed.

I know from experience that getting fired is awful. In hindsight I was not good at (nor did I enjoy using) the management style required of the job from which I was fired; it wasn’t my employees’ faults, it was mine. Thankfully, my employer at the time was gracious enough to give me the guidance and tools I needed to change, observant enough not to punish my employees when I stubbornly didn't change, and wise enough to act decisively before my employees felt they had to leave to be happy in their workplace. Olusola Tribble, Lauren Fitzgerald, and Laurel Fisher (who by contrast were all quite good at their jobs) were not fortunate enough to have that kind of leadership in their employer - Caroline Vincent and the Metro Arts Commission. I really don’t want to ask for anyone to be fired, and certainly not as a pro-union individual living in an anti-union state. But your legal responsibility as Commissioners is to the taxpayers and to your staff. You have failed both.

I likely won’t be emailing (or at least not mass emails) about this issue any further until after the community has organized to ensure real change can occur at the Metro Arts Commission. Your choice to have Ms. Andrea Blackman and Mr. Razel Jones speak to the Commission about Metro’s commitment to DEI under the guise of strategic planning while failing to publicly name the current and real failure of racism within your own department and commission made it clear that the leadership of this Commission is only interested in paying lip-service to racial justice while protecting the abusers of power within Metro.

I look forward to working with certain members of the Commission in the future to seek justice for its staff.
I look forward to working with the Metro Council to seek major funding increases for Metro Arts’ grant programs once this Commission and the Department are under new leadership.
I look forward to working with the Metro Council Budget and Finance and the Parks, Library, and Arts Committees to voice my concern that Metro Arts may be in violation of the aforementioned Executive Order and of Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Council should consider those violations before voting For or Against Resolution RS2021-1149 to approve a Federal ARP grant from the NEA to this Commission.

Alan Fey