An ambitious mix of visual art, interactive exhibits, an escape game and science fiction is coming to Nashville, along with the goal of sustainable jobs for area artists.

Otherworld Encounter, an interactive adventure brought to life by a team of Middle Tennessee visual artists, will debut at the Nashville Fairgrounds on Dec. 28 and will run until Jan. 13. The art experience will include 24 rooms or halls with interactive installations such as swings, a slime pond, light motion sandbox, a mountain slide, slow-motion fountains, photo-op stage, otherworldly creatures and foliage, and interactive murals. Patrons of the encounter can also choose to engage in a puzzle-based science fiction storyline.

The project is the brainchild of Sheila Whitlow, who operates youth sports programs in Nashville, and her daughter Jamie Whitlow, a 2015 MTSU graduate and an installation artist for music festivals.

“She was really struggling getting that work, and when she did, it was pretty competitive and didn’t pay very well,” Sheila Whitlow said.

Sheila said that even Burning Man, a famous music festival that Jamie has crafted art installations for, does not entirely cover the money that artists put in to creating the art.

“It’s such a great status symbol for an artist to have done an installation at Burning Man, and yet, they’re not really getting paid their worth,” Sheila Whitlow said. “So, that was the reason we wanted to do this. We wanted to support and create sustainable jobs and income for Nashville artists.”

A team of 14 carpenters, artists and designers worked on the installations for Otherworld Encounter in a warehouse in Nashville in the months leading up the the exhibit’s opening.

“Everything is Nashville-based,” Sheila Whitlow said.

After Otherworld’s run at the Fairgrounds, Sheila hopes to bring the exhibit to other cities across the Southeast to build revenue and reputation. Then, eventually, she hopes to open a permanent facility in Nashville in 2020 that would function as a learning center, a venue for art and a tool for the long-term employment of artists.

“Nashville has a fantastic community of artists, and a very small percentage have the opportunity for the community to see their work,” Sheila Whitlow said. “There’s tremendous support for art crawls and things like that, but selling the art is a struggle. So, what we’re doing is shifting the narrative to presenting it in a way that people will enjoy and pay to see instead of going to a gallery and buying a painting off of a wall. We are trying to bring a new way of presenting art to the area.”

“Nashville is known as Music City, but we want people to know it’s visual arts, too,” Sheila Whitlow added.

Find tickets and more information on Otherworld Encounter at otherworldencounter.com.