SEASON 3: EPISODE 5 TRANSCRIPT

Nicole Brandt Minyard

Nicole Brandt Minyard: I will say I didn't realize how often medical debt was going to come up as one of the primary reasons for homelessness. Our healthcare system has so much room for improvement already, but here's me seeing it tangibly impact people. I'm working with the people who are the fallout of them, who have gotten the worst of the worst. And so I think anytime we're able to connect with people who have experienced the issues and dream alongside them what the solution should be, I think service learning kind of gives you an opportunity to start doing that.

Dr. Greg Jones: Our world is filled with stories that too often go unheard, voices overlooked, creativity unseen. Yet hope has a way of bringing light to those hidden places. It reminds us that every person carries beauty, purpose, and the potential to inspire change. When we create spaces for those voices to be expressed, we help the whole community flourish. My name is Greg Jones, President of Belmont University, and I'm honored to be your guide through candid conversations with amazing agents of hope, people who demonstrate what it means to live with hope and lean into the lessons picked up along the way. They are The Hope People.

Today's agent of hope is Nicole Brandt Minyard, founder and executive Director of Daybreak Arts, a nonprofit organization in Nashville that provides a creative outlet and community for individuals experiencing homelessness. What began as student-led art days during her time as a student at Belmont has grown into a thriving movement where art becomes a vehicle for healing, connection, and empowerment.

In our conversation, Nicole shares how her faith, perseverance, and community have guided her through the challenges of building daybreak arts and how creativity can help people reclaim dignity and voice. From inspiring stories like artist Edwin Lockridge's journey to reclaim spaces once marked by exclusion to the organization's recent rebrand symbolizing light and new beginnings, Nicole's work reveals how art fueled by hope can transform lives. Nicole, thank you for joining us on the Hope People Podcast.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Dr. Greg Jones: You started working with people experiencing homelessness in high school before you even got to Belmont. How did that interest and commitment start and emerge?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah, so growing up I just always felt like God wanted me to make the world a better place. And so I volunteered a lot, I went on mission trips. And my senior year of high school, I got connected with a guy who invited me to start going to homeless encampments. And it was there that I just got to see how creative and resourceful people were. And a lot of the stereotypes that I had heard growing up I just learned were not true or they were half true.

They were just so much deeper and more complicated people than these quick little things that I had heard. So I just became really passionate about wanting to change those stereotypes and just share with the community how talented and creative our neighbors were that were hidden right around us. And so I moved to Nashville in 2010 to go to Belmont University.

And it was there that I kind of picked up that journey and started meeting the unhoused people here in Nashville. And through a work study job here under the Center of Service Learning, I started planning these community art days at Room in the Inn where I invited Belmont students to come and to create art and visual art, music and writing with the participants at Room in the Inn, and it kind of just funneled from there.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's exciting. How did you connect that experience of homelessness and poverty, which seems ugly with the arts and beauty?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah. So oftentimes when you are experiencing poverty and injustice you feel like you don't have a voice and that other people are telling your story and you become really desperate to want to be able to share your side, who you are with others. And through the relationships I made when I was interning and volunteering at Room in the Inn, I really started to see how art was that pathway for so many people. Art gave people a creative outlet, but it also allowed them to share their gifts and perspective with the community. And so art is just a really great vessel to bring together people who may not typically find themselves in the same room or find themselves in the same place, and we can get to know each other deeper.

Dr. Greg Jones: You're a remarkable agent of hope and that you bring beauty and cultivate that sense of a bright future for people in many different ways. What sustains your hopefulness day by day?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: It is definitely the people in my life that help give me perspective and hope. I watch our artists struggle with so many burdens and challenges, and I watch them still fight to be seen, fight to overcome poverty, to overcome transportation barriers, to overcome physical disabilities. And their resilience and desire to have been through so much and still want to show up as their full selves and to still want to give love to the people around us just gives me such hope that no matter your circumstances you can still find a way to be healed and to find the ways you can contribute to the world. And the artists show me that every day and it's been such an honor to do life with them over the last 11 years.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. When you were at Belmont, who were some people who inspired you and gave you a sense of hope and perhaps helped clarify your sense of calling and the work that you do?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: There's so many pivotal people here at Belmont. I will say Tim Stewart, who was the director of service learning when I was starting out this project. He really helped provide the framework, the feedback when I was really, "Is this something I should do? Is this of value?" He was a person that I could talk to think through what I was doing and the work that we were doing. And my religion professor. So Dr. Gwaltney teaches a class and there's a quote by Frederick Buechner and it's essentially, "Your calling is where your greatest desires meets the world's greatest need." Or something similar to that.

And I remember hearing that quote and I was like, "That is what I feel like I'm doing with Daybreak Arts. I'm so passionate about this and I'm so lucky that it gets to meet a need and make the world a better place." And while I joke I didn't get to learn marketing or business or accounting as a religion in the arts major, the professors really helped me build who I was as a person to understand my own identity. They gave me confidence to be able to feel like I could start a project as a college student, that I could turn it into something more.

They gave me grace if I needed to miss class because I was speaking at a conference or something like that early on. And I just so valued the space that they gave me to learn how to be fully me. And I think that that was really important as I have tried to create a space for our artists to learn how to be fully them and to create a safe space where they can learn and grow and fail and get better and then eventually succeed. And I feel like that's what the professors at Belmont and the Center of Service Learning really offered for me as a space here.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's wonderful. You started this project as Poverty and the Arts, and then about five years ago, you went through a rebrand to now calling it Daybreak Arts. Take us through that journey and what that rebrand has meant for you.

Nicole Brandt Minyard:

Yeah. So when I was filing for nonprofit status as a senior at Belmont, Poverty and the Arts were the names of the community service projects we were doing with Belmont. And again, as someone who didn't have a lot of background in business or marketing I kind of just utilized that when filing for nonprofit status. But no one knew if we were Poverty in the arts, of the arts, for the arts, and the arts. Even board members would get it wrong. It's just a mouthful. It's a lot to say. And then I also felt like there was something limiting about having poverty in the name.

Was this going to distort how someone might see the art because it led with poverty. And so the pandemic happened in 2020 and we were adapting, programming, figuring out what we were going to be doing, how we could still serve the artists, but it also opened up some free time that allowed me to really think I have been dreaming about potentially rebranding and renaming this organization for years, what if now's the time? And so, one of the best parts about getting to do a rebrand several years in is we really got to dream alongside our artists on who we wanted to be. So they were submitting name ideas and brand color ideas and tagline ideas.

And we just really got to get their feedback on how they wanted to be represented through this organization. And so through a lot of volunteers and a lot of our artists, we came up with this idea of Daybreak Arts where, again, so many of our artists say it feels like they're starting new, it feels like they're getting to start afresh, they're getting to leave behind this identity of homelessness and step into this identity of artists. And so we really felt like Daybreak represented that. And then we were able to have our logo is actually inspired by one of our artists, Kateri's pieces. And so we were able to adapt that into a logo and compensate her for her inspiration. And so our new brand really it's a part of our artists in every single aspect.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's beautiful. Describe the logo for us and what that signifies for you.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah. So it's essentially an abstract sun. And so this idea of light is a very big concept in art. Being able to have good natural light to paint, being able to shine light on injustice, this metaphor of light, this metaphor of new day and new beginnings, all of that just resonated so much with all of our artists. And so those are some of the big themes and imagery we wanted to be able to portray out of the rebrand.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's awesome. Can you share a story of an artist that you've been working with and how the arts have perhaps given them that fresh start, that daybreak, that new opportunity and how their life has changed as a result?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: We have so many artists who have been able to find their confidence and thus housing stability and relationships, but one of my favorite stories is one of our artists, Edwin Lockridge. His father was an artist growing up and his father actually wasn't allowed to exhibit in many galleries because it was segregation. And so he's a black man. And so he beared witness to a lot of that and grew up and through a lot of health issues and different things like that became homeless because his parents didn't really have a lot to be able to support. And he was creating art.

And several years ago, we were able to give him the opportunity to exhibit in one of those galleries that had been denied to his father. And so it was this full circle opportunity where not only was he getting to live out this dream of being an artist and the ways that his dad maybe didn't get to, but literally able to reclaim these spaces that they weren't able to do. And that Daybreak was able to be that bridge for him to be able to do that was so special. And one of the things he also does is he will find used car parts and trash along Nashville and create art.

And he actually has an exhibition at the Lane Motor Museum here in Nashville, and they actually have won a couple awards with his artwork in their gallery space. And it's just so special because he can be like, "This hubcap I found on Nolensville Road." Or just they have a story to them. And you really see these things that a lot of people discard and might see as trash and he transforms them into art that can win awards. So he's just been such an inspiration to watch really reclaim his identity and reclaim his space as an artist in ways that he hasn't always been able to.

Dr. Greg Jones: As you were talking about him and his own journey I was thinking about the ways in which people face challenges that land them in homelessness, and then the very reality of homelessness creates new challenges. How does the art beyond instilling beauty and creativity, how does it help contribute to healing for those people and for the community around them?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah. It is so interesting how many different things can land people into homelessness, whether that be medical debt, domestic violence, things that many people in my own life has experienced. But when you don't have maybe family members or social nets or things that are able to help you out when things get really hard you find yourself on the streets. And so when you find yourself experiencing homelessness you're deeply entrenched in isolation. That's part of why you're here. You had no one else who could also support you. People you knew were also in that situation likely.

And so I think being able to do art and to people to share art really allows our artists or allows people to get confidence again. A lot of times that has been beaten out of you through the hardships of life and all the things that you go through. Oftentimes homelessness you weaponize it and so you're like, "You better follow the rules or you'll become homeless." It's used as a threat often. And so once you're in homelessness people know you're not supposed to be there. You don't want to be there. It's extremely difficult and grueling experience. So our artists come into our program with just no confidence.

And to be able through both community and engaging in art and having people validate that art, you watch them start to get these little glimpses of who they were before the world, beat them up and spit them out or whatever. And so I think a lot of times people are just, especially when you're experiencing Experiencing hardship, trying to find that safe community of people who can be that support. And so while our artists may not have family members or things like that who might be able to help them, that's kind of the place we want to be, is that support system for our artists.

Dr. Greg Jones: You're an entrepreneur. You started Daybreak Arts and have shepherded it a little over a decade now in some beautiful ways. What have you learned? You spoke earlier about how as a religion and the arts major you didn't really take much in finance and marketing and accounting. What have you learned about starting and running a business as an entrepreneur albeit one that really focuses on the arts?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: I've learned a lot of skills through the school of life.

Dr. Greg Jones: Hard knocks maybe.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yes. I definitely feel like I might've learned the hard way, some of those things. But I think one of the most important things I've learned is building the right team, whether that be hiring the right staff, getting the right volunteers motivated and to take ownership or recruiting the right board members who have the right expertise. Over the years there's been many, many things that I haven't known how to do. I am always appreciative of the lawyers on the board, of the CPAs, of the people that have gone to school for many years and are here to help our organization by volunteering their expertise in time.

I also think there's a challenge in, as a founder and entrepreneur, especially with a really small team that's still growing, you have to balance the long-term bigger picture and vision with the day-to-day operations. And sometimes it can be very difficult to navigate. We want to be here in 10 years, but today we look like this. And so how do we grow that? And early on as a fresh graduate student I had no experience or context for that. And a lot of it felt like just showing up every day and trusting the process and learning from those around me and being willing to adapt as problems arose.

But I would say after 10 years starting to have some history, some proof that things did work out and they can make it, and if I keep on this track, I can accomplish what we're trying to do here, that there is a need in the community. But really just learning to communicate all of those different needs I have to be really in touch with my team and the day-to-day operations to make sure it's all running effectively. So if there's a crisis, I know how to best articulate that to be the bridge between the board and our staff and our artists.

I also think an interesting aspect of my job is sometimes I feel like in the same day I can be with some of the poorest of the Nashvillians and some of the most wealthy Nashvillians. And so it's my job to figure out how to bridge that gap and to help humanize everybody, honestly, in the whole scenario and to help how do we get people in the same room or just have those conversations and to show that everyone has something that they can learn and offer and give to each other.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's remarkable. As an entrepreneur, there are lots of challenges that you face because you're creating things that haven't existed before. What have been the biggest challenges you've faced over the last decade and what sustained you as a hopeful person through navigating those challenges?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: I think this may be one of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur, but it's definitely money and trying to figure out where the money is going to come from. Over the years, many people asked if I started this with a trust fund. Nope. I had a job at McDonald's at 16 paying for my own gas. So I've been hustling ever since. And there are people around me who start businesses with a lot of money and a lot of connections, and it can be really easy to feel jealous about those things, but I have to really remember what our mission is and what our goal is.

Our organization may never need to be a multimillion dollar nonprofit if that's not going to serve the group that we need to serve or we may need to have a variety of different programs. And so I think that tuning out all of the noise and making sure that I know what we're trying to do, because people also want to give you advice a lot. And it's not like a lot of it's good advice, but at the end of the day I do recognize that as the one who also has to operationalize this advice and what our resources are and what the artists want I'm the best to make that decision. And so to really understand that and be able to make those while relying on the team that I've built around me is really challenging, but one of the things that has, I think, led us to the most success.

Dr. Greg Jones: When you're at Belmont, you mentioned earlier with Tim Stewart, service learning, how has your orientation toward practice and really learning through service shaped your leadership style, the values that inspire and carry you through your leadership of Daybreak Arts?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: I would say one of the most valuable parts about just service learning is that ability to learn on the ground, to learn through relationship. I think often when service or social justice is an intellectual thought experiment or an intellectual endeavor, and we're not grounded in community with those actually experiencing the suffering or that need the support, that we can miss the mark a lot of times on how to build the right thing. And so when I was able to build relationships through service learning and when I was able to create projects for other Belmont students to come and build relationships, I think that that really allows us to expand our mind and understanding of the problems of the world and of the things that shape and create the problems.

I will say I didn't realize how often medical debt was going to come up as one of the primary reasons for homelessness. And just thinking about our healthcare system has so much room for improvement already, but here's me seeing it tangibly impact people. This is why we desperately need to figure out ways to fix all these different systems is because I'm working with the people who are the fallout of them, who have gotten the worst of the worst. And so I think anytime we're able to connect with people who have experienced the issues and dream alongside them what the solution should be, I think service learning kind of gives you an opportunity to start doing that.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's wonderful. You've described how all the way back in high school that part of what inspired you about wanting to make the world a better place was your faith in God and reading about Jesus and learning more. How has faith shaped your leadership and the kind of work you do?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: So much of this journey has been taking steps without necessarily the evidence that things were going to work out to be willing to trust that if things didn't work out, there was something else that I could turn to or that would be there, but that I was doing my best and best faith to take these steps that I felt like I was being called to take. And so I think being an entrepreneur is full of both faith and a humbling experience because you're going to fail a lot. You're going to fail in order to succeed. My stepdad always says, "Those who do the most will make the most mistakes."

And I think that's very true often and something that he'll do to encourage me when I feel like I've made mistakes and it's because I'm wearing all the hats. And I think also to be able to not see the world as it is, but to see how it could be. I feel like I have felt that my entire life with my relationship with God, and that's part of why early on I was volunteering and trying to figure out what that looked like. There's a verse where Peter has given keys to the kingdom and it's like on earth as it is in heaven. And I really took that as the calling to don't wait to get to heaven, start bringing heaven to earth. How can we reshape the world now, change it now so that people can thrive? And so I think that was another really important piece of having the faith that things can be better and that if I do my part they can slowly change.

Dr. Greg Jones: When you think about not the world as it is, but the world as it could be or might be, I want to take you to five years from now or maybe 10 years from now. What's your biggest dream for Daybreak Arts as you look to the future five or 10 years out? How does the world look different? How does Daybreak Arts look different as a result of those dreams?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah. So I hope that we are continuing to serve more and more artists, that we're growing the people in our community who we serve. We're hoping to be in a new, larger space, that we are able to offer more mediums to our artists, that we're able to create an education program for those that want to cultivate their craft in a more professional and entrepreneurship way, that we have the resources to do that.

And then we also want to be able to figure out that art healing, heart therapy piece and have programming that just is there for people that want to engage therapeutically. But overall, we hope that we are just growing the number of artists that we're serving as well as the number of community members who are interacting with our work who maybe are having their stereotypes challenged that they may believe, and just really able to see our homeless neighbors in a new light through our program.

Dr. Greg Jones: You spend a lot of time on the ground with concrete relationships with homeless people and artists and yet recently you had a big opportunity emerge when the Kelly Clarkson show contacted you and you went up to interview with them. Talk about what that reality was when you first heard it and how that's shifted your imagination and your dreams for what Daybreak Arts can be.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yeah. So we have joked in our organization about wanting a celebrity endorsement for a long time. And at the time I was thinking a celebrity might share our posts of their Instagram stories, like something super small. And so when we got a call from a producer that the Kelly Clarkson Show wanted to feature us I was very shocked that our celebrity endorsement was coming with a national TV presence. So there's been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears put into this organization for a while, and it hasn't had a whole lot of publicity and exposure in the grand scheme of some of the larger institutions here, which makes sense.

And so I was just shocked and thrilled that we were going to have the opportunity to share on a national platform. And then they wanted to invite one of our artists to come out with me, and they actually called several artists, had conversations with them, and they ended up selecting our artist Kateri to come. And Kateri was one of the first artists that I had met in that art room at Room in the Inn. And so the fact I was in my early 20s, she was in her early 60s, now she's in her 70s and I'm in my 30s, we have spent the last 11 years growing together. I have watched her go from living in a tent to getting housing, to getting her own vehicle, to now having a storage unit.

She has just been able to reconnect with family members. She's just been able to thrive in so many amazing ways. And so to have her, one of our first artists, come alongside me and to be recognized also by the Kelly Clarkson Show, I think both of us when we were both sitting in this old abandoned blue house, which was kind of our studio back in 2015, and having a few people show up at events and it's like, "Are people going to come to this? Are people going to believe in this?" And then when we were just flying back on the plane home it was kind of like, "Did that just happen? Are we going to have millions of people tuning into our work and our stuff now?" So I could not have been more happy with who they selected and to have that experience I had with Kateri.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. No one starts an organization without a bit of crazy optimism. There's a sense of joy in your smile, a sense of joy in your voice as you talk about all this work. But you've been through a decade of twists and turns and ups and downs. What would the wiser, still hopeful and still joyful, Nicole want to say to your younger self, your 18-year-old self, that you might also say to a current Belmont student who's dreaming dreams, but maybe a little hesitant to try to turn them into reality?

Nicole Brandt Minyard: I would say that this idea, this dream is resonating with you and it's worth pursuing. It's worth trying. It's worth starting. Don't overthink it. It could be really easy to think of everything that could go wrong or everything that you're not good at or everything that other people are better at, that maybe you are not the one capable to bring this idea to fruition.

It is so important to overcome those thoughts and to at least start and try because that may lead you in a different direction. You may not have it all figured out. We've adapted and grown a little as well over the last 11 years, but we wouldn't be where we are today if we had never started, if I had never started having those volunteer days at Room in the Inn which ultimately led to the nonprofit. And so don't be led by fear. It's really easy, but have the faith that you can do it.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. Thank you. One final question. Any entrepreneur depends on friends and family to provide sustenance day in and day out. Talk about the role that your family and your friends have played in sustaining you through all of your hope-filled work.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Yes. I am so grateful that while I did not have a trust fund, I had a wonderful family who made me rich in many other ways. And a lot of that is it takes a psychological toll. I will cry after I don't get a grant. It can be very difficult to work towards something and to get rejected and to not know why. And it is my husband, it is my sister, my parents, my friends who are alongside there encouraging me, who are letting me vent and feel like a failure for the briefest of moments to only jump back up and get ready to write the next grant the next day.

And so without their continued support I definitely would not be here today. And it's why I know why having a community is so important for people and why we want to be able to offer that to our artists. And then they've also become my community. And so yeah, it's just so important to have people in your corner who are willing to both encourage you, but also be honest with you and help you think through problems and not just be a yes person as well.

Dr. Greg Jones: That's great. Nicole, we are proud to count you as an alumna as part of our 100 Entrepreneurs community and thrilled to see the impact you're having with artists and the people you work with day in and day out. You're a true agent of hope. Thank you for joining us today on the Hope People Podcast.

Nicole Brandt Minyard: Thanks.

Dr. Greg Jones: Thank you for participating in this conversation with The Hope People. Our aim is to inspire you to become an agent of hope yourself and to help us cultivate a sense of wellbeing for all. To join our mission and learn more about this show, visit thehopepeoplepodcast.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, remember to rate and review wherever you get your audio content.