Unseen Nashville is a street tour about homelessness, launched by The Contributor in 2025. The tour was designed by the Vendor Leadership Team, a group of Contributor vendors that provides input and guidance to staff about different aspects of the organization.
We have previously written about Unseen Nashville, but after a couple of months of leading tours, trained tour guides have gathered insight into the tours that are important to the experience.
Shawn Lesley, a trained Unseen Nashville tour guide and Contributor vendor, sells his papers at the Music Row Roundabout, also known as Buddy Killen Circle. When Shawn isn’t selling the paper, he can often be found guiding an Unseen Nashville tour downtown.
Why did you become a tour guide?
To let people understand and know that homelessness is real.
When people take the tour, they will hear things about homelessness that they have not heard about before, and they will see what they haven’t seen before. People are so used to walking past homeless people, instead of taking the time out to listen to the problems and to what got them in that position in the first place.
I want to talk to people on the tour about all of that.
Why should people take the tour?
People should sign up for the tour because it will let them know that there are people out there that need help, and they are human beings.
People take life for granted, and they think that homelessness couldn’t happen to them. But all it takes is for someone they love to die, or they didn’t get the job, or there was some type of accident, or they couldn’t pay their bills, or they are falling into a depression — and everything just crumbles.
So, if you take the time to talk to people, if you come with us on the Unseen Nashville tour, you get to understand about those problems and hear our stories.
What is your tour about?
My tour is about my experiences. I talk about what happens if people get locked up. I talk about people who are homeless dealing with depression, people dealing with abusive family members.
I want my audience to understand that depression plays a big part in what we go through. Depression is a big part of being homelessness, and depression can lead to homelessness fast, [especially] if you don’t try to get help or if you don’t know the reason of how or why you got there.
People say, “he or she became homeless because they were on drugs.” It ain’t just drugs. It ain’t just alcohol. I was not on drugs. I got out of the penitentiary. I came back to my hometown thinking that my family was going to show me love, thinking that people I knew were going to be there. Come to find out, no one was there. When I found my family, they wanted money from me. They wanted me to go back to my old ways.
On my tours, I am talking about my story.
What have you learned from being a tour guide?
I’ve learned that a lot of people don’t see what’s really going on and don’t know how bad it is, and what we go through when being homeless. I thought that people at some point would know a little. But no, a lot of people that have never gone through homelessness really don’t know what it’s like, what we deal with, and what we have to go through.
What do you think is going really well with the tours?
I think the tours are enlightening people. I think the tour is going to [enlighten] people who have never questioned homelessness, have never looked at it, and always said, “It couldn’t be me. It couldn’t happen to me.” But yes, it could.
If you could take one person — anyone in the world — who would you want to go on one of your tours?
Everybody. Everybody in the world.
To be honest, it’s not just one person I want to come on the tour. It would be every rich, wealthy person who sees homelessness but never took the time to understand. Because on my tour, I plan on trying to open their eyes to understand. And I also want them to understand that “Yes, you’re making money. Yes, you’re doing this, and yes, you have done that. But some of your employees who used to work with you or still work for you are homeless. If you don’t see it, you don’t know it because you don’t pay attention to it. And they’ve made you millions of dollars.”
That’s who I want to come on my tour, so we can have a real conversation.