Nashville · Community Arts · Annual Report 2025
A year of
light, made to last.
We keep the lights on for the arts in every Nashville neighborhood — free music on porches, murals on walls, and making for anyone who shows up.
A letter from our Executive Director
01 — 06The lights stayed on because you did.
When we started Porchlight in 2009, the idea was almost embarrassingly simple: turn the lights on, open the door, and let the neighborhood make something together. Sixteen years later, that's still the whole plan — it just reaches a lot more porches.
This year, more than 14,200 neighbors made art with us, across nine neighborhoods. We paid 112 local artists real wages to teach. We painted 47 murals that will outlast all of us — and kept 78 cents of every dollar in direct program work.
None of it is ours, really. It belongs to the kid who picked up a brush for the first time on Buchanan Street, and to the porch on Douglas Avenue where a hundred strangers became neighbors over a Tuesday-night set.
Maya Ellison
Maya Ellison · Executive Director & Co-founder
Maya Ellison, Executive Director
16 years
of keeping the lights on — since 2009, never once gone dark.
Mission & values
02 — 06Art shouldn't need an invitation.
Our mission is free, year-round access to the arts for every Nashville neighborhood. No audition. No fee. No gatekeeping. Three beliefs hold it up.
Open Studio, Eastside — a free Saturday, everyone making at once.
Everyone's an artist
We don't screen for talent or ask for a résumé. If you show up, you belong in the room — and there's a brush, a mic, or a seat waiting for you.
Made in the neighborhood
Every program is built where people already are — on the porch, the corner, the school gym — and led by artists who live a few blocks away.
Art that stays
Murals that outlast a season. Skills that pay. A studio that's still open next year. We invest in art the neighborhood gets to keep.
The year in numbers
03 — 06A small team. A big porch.
neighbors made art with us
free programs, all no-cost
local artists paid to teach
neighborhoods served
“I came for one free class and stayed three years. Now I teach the Tuesday clay table myself.”
Della M. · Open Studio regular
new murals donated to the city
free outdoor porch concerts
volunteer hours given
returned for a second program
What we made together
04 — 06Three programs, one neighborhood at a time.
Three ways we keep the lights on — each one free, each one led by an artist who lives a few blocks away.
Mural Corps · Buchanan St.Walls the whole block owns.
Paid teaching artists and neighborhood teens design and paint large-scale murals together — turning blank walls into landmarks the block helped make. Every design starts with a community paint day.
“I'd never painted anything bigger than a sketchbook. Now there's a forty-foot wall on Buchanan with my name on the permit.”
Devon R. · 17 · Mural Corps apprentice
How a mural happens
Two more ways in
04 — 06Free live music, front-porch close.
Every week, a local act plays a real front porch and the whole street is invited. No tickets, no stage, no distance between the music and the people — just a neighborhood pulling chairs into the yard.
Porch Sessions · Douglas Ave.
Open Studio · EastsideA door that's always open.
Six days a week, anyone can walk into Open Studio and make something — clay, screenprint, paint, sound. Materials are free, the help is friendly, and nobody asks why you came.
The shape of the year
04 — 06Five years of turning the lights up.
Neighbors reached, by year
Annual participants, 2021–2025
Who showed up
Participants by age
- Youth 42%
- Adults 33%
- Seniors 25%
Free program hours delivered
No-cost programming per year
Where the lights were on
04 — 06Nine neighborhoods. One city, lit up.
The work shows up where people already are — on the corner, the porch, the school gym. Here's where 14,200 neighbors found us this year.
- Buchanan2,640
- Douglas Ave.2,180
- The Nations1,910
- Eastside1,640
- Antioch1,510
- Woodbine1,420
- Wedgewood980
- Salemtown820
- Trinity Hills700
The mural mile
Nine walls in eighteen months turned a cut-through into a destination — and a paid pipeline for fourteen neighborhood teens, three of whom now teach the program they came up through.
Open books
05 — 06Where every
dollar went.
We raised $1.84M in 2025 and kept overhead lean on purpose — so the porch lights stay on, not the back office.
How we spent it
Total expenses · $1.72M
Where it came from
Revenue · $1.84M
- Grants 46%
- Individual gifts 28%
- Events 15%
- Earned 11%
Program investment
$1.34M across the work
Mural Corps
$512kPorch Sessions
$438kOpen Studio
$246kYouth pay
$94kMaterials
$50ktotal revenue
individual donors
per $1 to programs
clean audits running
Looking ahead
06 — 06What we're building next.
We're not slowing down. Three commitments shape the year ahead — bigger reach, a permanent home, and more artists on payroll.
“We spent sixteen years proving the porch light works. Now we build the house around it.”
Maya Ellison · Executive Director
Reach 20,000 neighbors
Bring Porch Sessions to five new neighborhoods and add a second mobile studio.
Open a permanent Eastside home
Break ground on a year-round studio & gallery the neighborhood gets to keep.
Pay 150 local artists
Double our teaching roster and launch a paid apprenticeship for graduating youth.
How you keep the lights on
Keep the porch lit.
Give monthly
A recurring gift keeps a porch light on all year.
Host a porch
Offer your steps; we bring the music and the chairs.
Volunteer
Three hours of help lights up a whole block.
A fictional organization — this report is a design sample showing how an annual report could look & feel.
© 2025 Porchlight Community Arts Collective
501(c)(3) · Designed & built by One Eleven