What Are Friends For

Hand in Hand

We’re working to be a good friend … How about you?

What are friends for?

It’s a question that gets asked often, usually when someone has helped another person. The person receiving the help expresses gratitude and the helper responds with, “Well, what are friends for?”

And that really gets to the purpose of Creative Parks Nashville: We’re a “friends” group that supports the mission of Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation’s Music, Theater, and Visual Arts divisions.

These divisions offer creative arts educational and enrichment programs that touch virtually every demographic in Nashville. Eager musicians from school age children to senior citizens come together to learn new instruments and improve on existing skills. Poke your head into the Visual Arts building and you’ll find students busily creating paintings, sculptures, pottery, and more. And, Nashville’s next Nicole Kidman may be involved in a Theater division offering today.

Arts funding is always tight

Keeping this wide range of classes and activities going is expensive, and as in virtually any city, funding is always a struggle.

That’s where Creative Parks Nashville (CPN) comes in.

As a nonprofit organization, CPN raises funds to support classes, activities, and purchases that are not covered by city funds. There are several ways we do this, including direct solicitation, profits from sales, corporate programs, fundraising events, and others.

CPN uses all of these funds (aside from office supplies, CPN itself has virtually no overhead) to support the three arts divisions. This allows them to give scholarships to needy students, pay local artists and teachers honorariums for the work they do, replace dated equipment, and much more.

How you can support local art programs

To get back to the question we posed at the top of this post: What are friends for? We hope we’ve made the case that CPN is a good friend of Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation’s Music, Theater, and Visual Arts divisions.

Lastly, can we now ask if you would be a friend too and make a donation of any amount to CPN so these vital, enriching community arts programs can do even more good work in the coming months? If you’re able, please click here to make a contribution.

We would be honored if you would partner with us.