Statements
Mission
Girls Write Nashville is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that empowers expression through songwriting, production, mentorship and creative community building for female-identifying teen artists in Nashville, TN. We are an educational program aligned with the standards of Creative Youth Development (CYD) and Culturally Responsive Education (CRE). We envision the future of music education based as modernized, inclusive, working to close the gender gap and informed by music as a participatory-based culture in order to reap the full community building value of the arts.
In a GWN Writers Guild, participants learn to write and record original music in a supportive community of peers led by a trauma-informed teaching artist over the course of a 20 week semester. Through a partnership with MNPS's Community Achieves, Guilds take place on-site at several Title I MNPS schools as well as at our Metro Center facility.
Nashville's only music program founded specifically on the value of inclusion, we actively solve for accessibility barriers believing that when we do, our student community will accurately reflect Nashville's true diversity and work to create a safe and inclusive path to cultural participation within our city's music scene.
Background
Girls Write Nashville is a Nashville, TN-based nonprofit with a mission to use songwriting and mentorship to empower middle and high school girls. In our 6-month programs, girls work with adult mentors, share their work in a "Guild" of her peers, and collaborate to record an original end-of-season album.
GWN was started as a Metro Arts Thrive program community project founded on a $2,800 micro-grant in 2016. After our successful first season grew community amongst 9 participants and 5 artist mentors, produced a youth-written compilation album and packed the old Family Wash for a community release show, the program was continued after the initial participants said, "see you next year!"
After receiving tax-exempt status in 2018, in 2019 we received a major grant from the Gannett Foundation to implement our programming as after-school programs at four Title I middle-schools in Antioch and North Nashville, as a well as an additional high-school Antioch program at The Hispanic Family Foundation. Through this grant, we were able to triple the number of girls we served, expand our impact to regions that are geographically disconnected, and strengthen our relationship to the MNPS school district.
In the face of COVID-19, we transitioned 100% of our after-school programs and our mentorship to virtual programming, and partnered with Music Makes Us to provide free virtual creative music programs to any K-12 MNPS student, through our gender-neutral wing of programming Loudmouth Community Music. Because of our successful virtual programs, we were granted TN CARES Act funds to facilitate our songwriting distance learning programs for MNPS.
2020-2021 also saw the launch of our low-cost online classes that connected students across the country. 15% of proceeds from these classes goes to support our free programming in MNPS. From our virtual programs, 92% of participants said their Writers Guild positively affected their mental health during a time of isolation and 100% said their Writers Guild gave them a sense of community in a time of isolation.
In 2021, we began a partnership with the Music Education and Commercial Music departments in Tennessee State University who have observed a significant gender gap in core music technology knowledge amongst incoming students.
In the summer of 2021, Girls Write Nashville was thrilled to be invited to address Metro Council's Women's Caucus to discuss ways to bring GWN Writers Guilds to more MNPS schools.
Impact
Our program is a community-based learning model that utilizes language-acquisition based learning techniques and functional applied music theory to teach students the language of music. We are informed by the concept of music as a participation-based culture to reap the full community-building value of music. Taking an approach aligned with the values of Culturally Responsive Education allows us to to avoid any sort of cultural imposition in the way we teach music, with students able to engage in the music tradition or genre of their choice.
Students also build social emotional skills, leadership skills, confidence and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) that are shown to reduce the long-term negative health effects of childhood trauma. We are a community building circle practice aligned with Tier I SEL Foundations Core Practices of MNPS's Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). We are currently developing recording technology curriculum in partnership with TSU to close the gender tech gap they experience in collegiate recording technology students.
We often have people ask us: why is it important to especially serve teen girls?
Between ages 12-14, girls experience a 30% drop in confidence compared to boys. Girls are 3x more likely to be cyber-bullied and are twice as likely to develop PTSD. Rates of depression and self-harm are increasing more dramatically for teen girls than teen boys. The proportion of girls who say they are not allowed to fail rises from 18 to 45 percent from the ages of 12 to 13 and the aversion to risk taking and unwillingness to fail that is the result of this perfectionism follows girls into adulthood, adversely affecting them in an arena which rewards the ability to fail and rebound.
Students in Title I schools disproportionally lack access to high quality arts and extracurricular programs and lack transportation access to reach programs away from school. Further, the average 21st century student is often turned off from traditional music education programs which are recitation-based rather than participatory-based and have historically been male-dominated and teach cultural whiteness. Our partners at TSU have observed a lower level of core knowledge amongst female students than male students in their introductory recording technology courses. In the music industry, women make up21.7% of artists, 12.3% of songwriters, and only 2.1% of producers in the music. Of the 13 major record label groups, only one is women-led.
We believe in taking on the burden of access actively as an organization. In 2020-2021. 92% of participants were from a Title I MNPS school. 22% were English Language Learners.
In the past year, students served were 52% Black, 26% Hispanic/Latinx, 18% White, and 4% Asian. Of these, 22% were English Language Learners.
The following results were achieved in the 2021-2022 school year and are expected to be largely replicated moving forward.
Positive Childhood Experiences:
100% of students felt accepted in their Writers Guild.
100% of students felt a sense of belonging in their Writers Guild.
100% felt like there was an adult who cared about them.
92% enjoyed participating in music making with other people.
Confidence:
91% said they felt more confident sharing their creativity with others in their Writers Guild.
92% said they could be different without doubting themselves.
100% said they could learn new things without getting overwhelmed.
Social Emotional:
83% felt safe expressing their inner thoughts and feelings in their Writers Guild.
92% said their Writers Guild helped them express difficult emotions and helped them express their thoughts and feelings in a deeper way.
83% said they felt able to express how they're really feeling in their Writers Guild.
During COVID-19:
92% their Writers Guild positively affected their mental health during a time of isolation,
100% said their Writers Guild gave them a sense of community in a time of isolation.
Needs
1. Volunteers: Board President, Fundraising Chair, and long-term skilled administrative help - $0
2. In-kind donations of instruments, recording technology, healthy snacks, and printed materials - $0
3. A new physical location and/or fiscal support for a new location - $20,000
4. Membership fee sponsorship to join the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, $1,000 - $15,000 (depending on membership level)
5. A visionary willing to invest in making our COVID-era online programs a permanent offering, including building a web platform and expanding organizational capacity - $30,000 - $50,000
CEO Statement
Girls Write Nashville and our gender-neutral initiative, Loudmouth Music, are guided by a deep commitment to equity and accessibility. Early in our development, we made an internal agreement to do what is best, not what is easy. While music, and thus music-education, had originally been a natural and crucial part of multi-generational community bonding, it has tragically become a luxury only available to those who can afford it. Because of this, our core team set out to create programs and curriculum that could provide world-class music education to students across a wide socio-economic spectrum, meeting them in their generational and cultural moment through accessible music production apps, lending instruments, and meaningful project-based learning. We believe that Nashville should be the BEST place in the world to be a kid who wants to learn music!
The following are ways we commit to accessibility:
1) No instruments required:
Instrument-centered programs, whether free or not, inherently exclude low-income youth, as they limit music learning to youth who can afford an instrument and to those who have the sonic and physical space at home to practice. Our programs encourage instrument learning, but do not require it, therefore widening the number of kids who can participate. Students across the socio-economic spectrum see similar outcomes in their understanding of complex musical concepts through our curriculum, which incorporates free, safe apps like Bandlab for Education, and can be accessed on devices the district has provided to low-income students.
2) Close partnerships with MNPS/Community Achieves
Marketing outside of public school district partnerships leaves low-income and English Language Learner students behind. Direct partnership with school districts is the most sure way to ensure access to programs. We have a direct relationship with MNPS, who promotes our services directly to all enrolled students and teachers through social media, district-wide newsletters, multi-lingual outreach, and direct reach outs from arts teachers to their students.
3) ELL-inclusive
Since our program does not rely on means testing to define our impact, we can serve our community with a much more realistic, contemporary, and inclusive portrait of need, as many undocumented students do not receive services the district uses to measure economic disadvantage. We have proven outcomes in raising literacy skills and English language confidence in ELL students, and also commits itself to being a safe place where students can write in their native languages as well.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Youth Development - Youth Development Programs |
| Secondary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - Music |
| Tertiary Category: | Education - Educational Services |
Areas Served
Though open to students throughout Davidson County, Girls Write Nashville provides the most intentional outreach to the following zip-codes. Intentional outreach includes launching free after-school programs, partnering with music teachers to provide workshops, and designing a path of continuation for students who face additional barriers (including transportation.) Loudmouth is open to people of any age or gender, anywhere in the world!
37211 (Antioch)
37013 (Antioch)
37218 (Bordeaux)
| TN - Davidson |
