Now wrapping up its 10th year, Daybreak Arts — formerly known as Poverty and the Arts — creates artistic and economic opportunities for people currently and formerly experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. The nonprofit’s Artist Collective Program provides a professional art studio, supplies, workshops, exhibition space and representation for 17 artists, allowing them the opportunity to not only create work but also sell it.
Their work is diverse in media, subject matter and style. Some artists are self-taught, while others have received training and hold art degrees. Founder and director Nicole Minyard tells the Scene that another goal of the organization is to create different ways in which the Nashville community can interact with people experiencing homelessness.
“So often your only interaction is [when they’re] on the streets in survival mode,” says Minyard. “And so one of the things that we are trying really hard to do is provide a context in which you’re coming in and seeing people’s creative talent. … What they’re able to contribute is highlighted more so than what they need.”
A.M. HASSAN is a member of the Artist Collective Program, and you can find her watercolor paintings in Daybreak’s online shop. She came to the organization in 2016, after decades of feeling stalled in her art-making due to parenting responsibilities, economic restraints and pursuing higher education. “It’s wonderful,” says HASSAN. “It’s like a family atmosphere, everybody respects everybody else. We all help each other. We get stuck on what color to use or what technique, [and we] ask everybody, ‘How does this look?’ Everybody puts their two cents in and there’s nothing malicious. Everybody really wants to help the other person.”
With Daybreak’s financial support, HASSAN attended the Arts and Business Council’s creative entrepreneurship course Periscope. She’s working toward fulfilling her personal vision — opening an art gallery to showcase her own work and that of diverse local artists.
With the pandemic, Minyard’s team had to regroup. They packaged supplies for artists, put classes on hold, and moved sales to an online platform. With events canceled, it also became a good time to consider rebranding.
“I felt like ‘Poverty and the Arts’ might be potentially alienating some really talented artists on the streets who didn’t want to join our organization with ‘poverty’ front and center,” says Minyard. The artists were enthusiastic about rebranding and quickly became part of the process. Some felt that the original name further marginalized artists who are already profiled and labeled due to their housing status.
HASSAN acts as an adviser to the board, and she likes the message in the new name. It comes from the Maya Angelou poem “Still I Rise,” which is a testament to the strength and grace required to transcend barriers. The logo was inspired by a 2015 piece by Kateri, the program’s first artist member, and Daybreak compensated her for that inspiration.
In the year ahead, Daybreak will be revamping its courses for artists and making them more accessible via video. Classes will cover principles of art and design, color theory, drawing and other skills, as well as the business side of being an artist — understanding a grant contract and budgeting, pricing artwork and finding buyers. Minyard hopes the curriculum can be a model that the organization uses to expand to different states and regions.
Locally, the organization will continue to help Nashvillians build relationships with people outside their communities — for housed Nashvillians to meet unhoused residents not just by serving them a meal in a church or shelter, but by getting to know them personally through their artistic contributions.
“By building relationships with them, it’s really hard to then negate them and to deny that they exist,” says Minyard.
