A Conversation with Asheville Creative Advocates
Meet some of the artists and organizations that have shaped Asheville Creative Arts for the past 10 years.
Spotlight: Safi Martin, COO of Hood Huggers International
“At no time ever has ACA tried to direct our perspective, our approach, or anything about what we do. They have honored our vision in every step of the way. It feels good to be in community with an organization that operates in that way.”
– safi martin
Since our founding, Asheville Creative Arts has worked to ensure all of Asheville’s communities see themselves as represented on our stages and welcome in our spaces. Part of this work means holding conversations with community organizations related to equity and access, and ACA has been having such conversations with Hood Huggers International for more than five years. Recently, along with Peace Gardens & Market, the organizations have partnered to create Blue Note Junction, an inclusive neighborhood space with a commitment to reinvesting profits back into BIPOC neighborhoods and endeavors in Asheville. Blue Note Junction will feature greenhouses, community co-working spaces and business incubators, a commercial kitchen, indoor and outdoor performance spaces, and more.
ACA’s Carolina Corona spoke with Safi Martin, COO of Hood Huggers to discuss the significance of the partnership between the organizations, and how Asheville Creative Arts has supported Hood Huggers’ mission over the years.
SAFI: Our [Hood Huggers] mission is to cultivate the health and wealth of the community using the arts, environment, and social enterprise. One of the ways that we do this, and it’s how our work got started, was through community gardens. Right now we manage two plots in the Burton St. community where we grow food and native plants. We harvest and deliver food to elders in the community who are on fixed income. If we have extra, we make products like jams, jellies, and hot sauces. We also sell on our farm stand. We also have a youth development program that focuses on workforce and entrepreneurial development. We work on preparing them for living wage or better jobs, to set our youth on a strong trajectory. We also do social enterprise.
I mentioned art and environment. For the social enterprise piece, we have a two prong approach: one is Hood Tours, which is Asheville’s first black-owned tour business, and then the other is Blue Note Junction, which is a project that is in development right now. That is going to function as a community resiliency hub/entrepreneurial development space. It will be a multiuse space that will combine affordable housing, the arts, a market to sell our produce and the produce of other farms and gardens throughout the city, commercial kitchen, among other uses.
There [are] a couple of connections that we made with ACA early on. One was through the arts. ACA was producing some really powerful and community based theater and had engaged with DeWayne [Barton] to help with some set design and to participate in some of the Talk Backs that happened after the performances. From that, we just continued to grow in relationship with ACA and somewhere along the line, we had an opportunity to receive some grant funding for the work that we do. We were self-funded for the first 10-15 years of the work, so we didn’t have a non-profit. This was our first time getting funds, so we mentioned it to Abby with ACA and she offered to become our fiscal agent–but I think we are probably a little spoiled in that relationship, because not only did ACA step in as our fiscal agent, but they came with a whole battery of technical assistance. Abby has helped us build our budgets, and we meet on a regular basis to go through our budgets [and] grant opportunities coming up, to help guide us in building relationships with funders. It’s just been an amazing relationship over the years.
It’s one thing to be a fiscal sponsor and just kind of pass through, like you administer the grant and send the money to the other organization as a fiscal agent, but for us having budget templates, or sharing back of the house technology, softwares, etc., it has made our work better and laid down an initial foundation for us to have a solid data collection, which is really important for nonprofits working with grant money so we can report out what we are doing easily. That’s been a game changer for us. ACA has also pointed us in the direction of more affordable services, things that are accessible to nonprofits that we didn’t know about like funding opportunities, infrastructure, etc. that have strengthened our organization.
One of the things we have been doing from the very beginning in 2003 was engaging neighborhood youth to help take care of our community. We pay them a stipend to pick up garbage in the neighborhood, to help in the community gardens, to make deliveries of produce to the elders, to do little odd jobs for elders such as taking their trash to the curb each week–rake their leaves, shovel snow, etc.
We got an opportunity in 2021, around when the pandemic was the worst, to formalize and scale the youth work we had been doing. It was a significant investment from a local family foundation. That was the first time we were managing a larger grant and needed to hire employees. ACA was critical to that process. They have enabled us to develop and now launch a full-fledged workforce development program for young people. Our bigger dream is to turn that into a bigger pipeline where we are working with kids from Kindergarten all the way to adulthood to prepare them for the trades or other careers of their interest. ACA has been the underpinning of our growth. I would also add to that the Blue Note Junction project that we’re working on. When we started dreaming of that project and talking to Abby and the ACA team about it, everyone got excited. Abby has been with us every step of the way, even serving as an anchor tenant for the performing arts center and space. We wouldn’t be doing that without ACA’s support.
Having talked to other smaller nonprofits, that are doing community work, kind of just grew organically right, one of the things we found early on and one of the things we continue to find now–we’re still considered a small nonprofit, even though we have grown significantly–is that some local and larger funders were really hesitant to invest in our nonprofit because we were so small and young. What ACA has done for us, I believe that funders should be doing: investing in the capacity building efforts of new nonprofits. Like really getting the foundation built for a new organization so that they can function successfully and stay in integrity, have good record keeping, have a good strong functioning board, and understand the ins and outs of the nonprofit world because when you walk into it, it’s just like starting a new business, there are lots of rules.
“When describing our relationship with ACA, I always tell people that it is a true partnership.”
– safi martin
If you’ve not come up in a family or community that has taught you how to run a business and you do that for the first time, there are a lot of missteps you can make and not know you’re making those steps if you don’t have someone experienced. Someone to tell you don’t stretch your business this way, do it this way. Don’t fill out that form, fill out this form. It is the exact same when you’re entering the nonprofit world for the first time. There are a lot of things that if you don’t know that you need to do them, you might leave them undone and they might come back and haunt you, so to speak. Abby has been fantastic about guiding us, telling us when we need to apply for a solicitation license, interacting with funders, and making sure you have a strong relationship with them. It’s the type of heart-centered, caring technical assistance that I strongly believe funders should be investing in.
When describing our relationship with ACA, I always tell people that it is a true partnership. I am aware of other organizations that do fiscal sponsorship, but you’re usually just paying a fee for them to manage the money, and the extent of the relationship with ACA is just so unique. We partner with them around arts programming, usually giving the young people that we work with opportunities. The creativity and stamina of ACA, especially Abby the ED, and the ability to collaborate in such a deeply authentic and shared power framework is really amazing to be a part of.
ACA deserves a lot of accolades for that and I will say as well, we meet on a regular basis to assess where we are as an organization and continue to receive technical assistance. That piece is also just amazingly helpful and has helped us grow as an organization. The last thing is, we really did not want to be a nonprofit or have to go down that route, the only reason we did is that people started wanting to fund the work that we do and we just have this framework in the USA around the tax deductible donations. Abby understands that about us, but it turned out the route we needed to go.
It has been amazing to work with Abby and ACA. I just can’t say enough good things. I think in these times that we’re living right now, it feels like there is an all out assault on people who are trying to support the community. That’s what it comes down to for me, I don’t understand, it doesn’t make any sense to me at all. To have an organization to work with that gets it, gets the importance of the work that we’re doing, honors the voices and perspectives of the organization that they’re working with, that is true for us, I am sure that is true for other organizations. At no time ever has ACA tried to direct our perspective, our approach, or anything about what we do. They have honored our vision in every step of the way. It feels good to be in community with an organization that operates in that way.