From Music City Banners to Grocery Bags: A Creative Community Partnership

Somebody had to decide what to do with a pile of used July 4th banners.

They could have gone in a landfill. Instead, they're going to be carried out of our store full of groceries.

Let Freedom Sing! Music City July 4th drew a record 400,000 people downtown this year. A celebration that size leaves a lot behind.

Smart Art + Craft Supplies took the banners and started sewing. More than 350 pounds of vinyl won't be wasted. Nearly 100 reusable grocery bags are coming to The Store.

But the more I thought about those bags, the more I realized the banners were only the beginning.

Some of the fresh produce that goes into them will be there because a farmer had more than they could sell.

That food won't be wasted.

The shopper filling the bag will choose exactly what goes into it. Not a box packed by someone else with things their family may or may not eat. They'll choose the tomatoes they know how to use, the fruit their kids like, and the refrigerated and frozen foods that work for their household.

So that food won't be wasted either.

And the hours people give us? Those won't be wasted.

A volunteer will stock those tomatoes. Another will welcome the person who chooses them. Someone will scan the groceries, someone will fill one of these bags, and someone will carry it to the car.

Every hour moves food a little closer to someone's table.

There's one more piece of this story I almost missed.

The people sewing these bags are adults with intellectual disabilities gaining paid work and job training through Smart Art, a social enterprise benefiting Progress, Inc. Their time and talent aren't being overlooked.

In fact, the more I think about it, almost nothing about this bag is being overlooked.

A banner that could have been trash.

Produce that could have been discarded.

Food chosen instead of assigned.

An hour freely given.

A person whose skill somebody needed.

And eventually, a bag of groceries carried home by a neighbor who chose every bit of what's inside.

Maybe the real art isn't just what Smart Art made from the banners. It's what happens when a community decides not to waste what it has.

Thank you, Smart Art + Craft Supplies, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp., and SINGER for seeing possibility in what was left behind.