Neighborhood Nonprofit Spotlight: abrasiveMedia

Patch talks to abrasiveMedia about its mission to keep Nashville artists connected with the facilities and tools they need to make the art they want in a collective, community based environment.

Patch: Tell Patch a little bit about your organization!

abrasiveMedia: abrasiveMedia began in 2004 as a small collective of artists. Since that time, we have grown to host a wide-range of services for the creative community. We have produced such notable projects as Th3 Anomaly (a graphic novel in which each panel is a painting) and Dear Apocalypse (a meditation on trauma and surviving through music, dance, aerial, and poetry). Among our upcoming projects is Project Awake, a multi-disciplinary theatrical show created to provide arts access to at-risk youth.

Patch: How does your organization help to strengthen the local community?

abrasiveMedia: abrasiveMedia exists to be a bridge-building organization, making connections between people and big ideas. We provide artist residencies, community classes, and workshops as well as offer our facility as a low-cost event site for artists and nonprofits.

Patch: What are the biggest struggles your organization faces?

abrasiveMedia: The work we do as an organization -- building collaboration and cross-pollination of artistic genres and disciplines -- requires a strong support base. We need more people who believe in our mission to facilitate Nashville's performing, visual, and literary artists to join us in the next phase of our growth.

Patch: What do you hope for the future of your nonprofit?

abrasiveMedia: A non-profit organization often begins like most start-ups -- with a few people doing a great amount of work for little or no pay. We are no different, and as we continue to grow in both size and programming we are working to grow smarter about how we manage our most important resource: our people. abrasiveMedia is an artists' organization. We believe that by facilitating artists, we can strengthen the arts. We are working to that end by developing a solid funding foundation to enable us to continue to bring the arts into the communities that we serve.

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