By SHARON EBERSON

Mitch Swain is leaving as the first and only head of the Greater Pittsburgh Art Council, but not before he helps his successor settle in. 

It had been announced that Swain, 61, would exit at the end of March, after leading the arts advocacy organization since 2005, when the Arts Council was created by a merger of ProArts and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance.

A search committee led by the Arts Council’s board of directors was formed last summer to create a transition plan and lead a national search for new CEO, who will be named sometime in the next few weeks.

“I want to be here for a proper handoff,” Swain said, “and leave that person in as good a position as possible.”

The native of Columbus, Ohio, noted he had just marked 18 years on the job, plus two years of working on the merger that created the organization. His first job in Pittsburgh had been as director of shared services at the Cultural Trust.

‘It’s really been very, very rewarding,” Swain says. “There are only a few positions like this around the country, particularly in great arts cities like Pittsburgh. So I’ve  been very fortunate to be the CEO of the Arts Council for such a long time and work with the arts community and be inspired by artists and work with some great staff and board members.”

He pauses and laughs – clearing out his desk and going back through files has led to a few walks down memory lane. 

“It has really been a lot of fun, to be honest.”

It wasn’t all fun, of course. There was a pandemic shutdown, during which GPAC swung into action to create an emergency fund and get $500 into artists’ hands quickly, then a relief fund that distributed $5,000 grants to “artists facing dire financial emergencies due to COVID-19.” 

Among the Arts Council’s accomplishments during Swain’s tenure is using research and data as a tool to illustrate the contributions made by Pittsburgh’s creative arts scene, both to the city’s vitality and economy. 

As Swain gets ready to make the handoff to another new arts leader in Pittsburgh, here is some of what he had to say about how the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council works and its accomplishments during his 18 years on the job.

QUESTION: Outside of artists and people involved in the arts community, the idea of an arts advocacy group might be foreign to a lot of people. Can you describe what GPAC is, and what it means to our region?

SWAIN: When I talk to people who work outside of the arts about what we do, I compare it to being a chamber of commerce for the arts and culture community. We have members and we provide them with services, professional development and promotion for the field. And one of those services that we provide is being an advocate. And one thing that has really helped us to be a strong advocate, locally, statewide and nationally is a research capacity. You know, we’re one of the few arts service organizations in the United States that has a researcher on staff and have had for almost 10 years.

When you can approach a situation with facts, with data, and you can answer questions about impacts of a strong arts and culture community, you’re in a much better position. Oftentimes, people who work in our field want to fight the good fight with passion. I just have found, particularly when I’m talking with elected officials and people in the business community and other folks, having that data, facts, having economic impact studies and studies on funding of racial equity and various things like that, really help us to do a better job representing the field.

QUESTION: Technology has changed so much in the years that you’ve been there. How has that changed what you do? 

SWAIN: Absolutely. I think we’ve used, like, five internal database systems, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, as things have changed. It is just so much easier now to pinpoint where people are working in the sector and what the impacts are of their work. The information that is available sector-wide is so much better, it’s kind of mind-boggling because, the further you go, the deeper you have to go. Fortunately, we’ve had great people on staff that have been able to manage that, because that’s not my specialty. My specialty is talking [laughs].

QUESTION: Can you describe how GPAC is funded?

SWAIN: We survive on contributed income that is predominantly from local foundations like the Heinz Endowments. It is one of the main reasons that the Arts Council is around in the first place. They are our largest contributor, every year. There’s the Regional Asset Districts, the Hillman Foundation and many other foundations are annual supporters, whether it be through project funding or general operating support. We are really fortunate to have RAD in this community. A lot of other cities would kill to have that. So we’re able to get state funding every year for the work that we do, but the great majority of our funds come from the local foundation community and other kinds of funders like that.

QUESTION: And money that comes from the state also funnels through you? 

SWAIN: We’re what’s called the arts funder in four counties, Allegheny being one of them, for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. And so we have annual funding that comes from that. And then we add to that some other regranting opportunities, sometimes those come from foundations, other times, from a state or other local or national partners.

QUESTION: During the pandemic, it was meaningful that you got on board pretty quickly for those in need. I imagine that was a proud moment. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re proud of, and how that distribution of money through GPAC works?

SWAIN: One of the things I’m most proud of is the way my staff and board responded, particularly at the outset of COVID-19. We were able to raise about a quarter of a million dollars very quickly and make grants through the emergency fund for artists. It was a staff driven idea, and we had individuals, corporations, foundations give us a lot of money in a hurry. I think as much as anything, it certainly helped some people pay some bills. I think what it said more importantly was, we’re paying attention to you, we value you as artists. We recognize that all your paying gigs just went away in a hurry, but there was a community out there that cared. Let’s face it, $500 doesn’t go very far when you’ve gotta pay your monthly rent and that sort of thing. But before other local state and federal funds became available, we were able to do that in a hurry. And valuing people, I think, was maybe the most important thing. 

Also, with the help of some other arts leaders, we were able to create working groups that helped the rest of the arts and culture community work together and talk through the issues about how we come back from this, and be there for one another going through a really difficult time.

Then we were able to get some COVID relief funds from the National Endowments for the Arts and, just a few months ago, we awarded $450,000, primarily to small organizations and artists and folks who had not had access to some of the other big federal programs. So, there are many things that I’m proud of, but the one that’s most recent and I think as valuable as any, the way we responded to people that were going through this three-year odyssey of COVID-19.

QUESTION: I think of GPAC as representing individuals and smaller groups, folks just trying to make a living in the arts or trying to take that next step. Can you give me an example of how a smaller arts group might benefit from GPAC?

SWAIN: We’re one of the few arts councils in the country that has a person on staff that’s solely focused on helping artists. We have an artist outreach coordinator, and we’ve had someone like that on staff now for probably 15 years. Most recently, we’ve tried to ramp up and target programs that can be of help to teaching artists, to emerging artists, to artists of color, and to small- and medium-sized organizations. 

We have business volunteers for the arts and volunteer lawyers for the arts program that really have done some wonderful things in terms of helping with legal issues, with contracts, with putting together marketing plans and thinking about governance issues, and whether to start a 501(c) or an LLC. 

There was a program that we started kind of at the beginning of COVID-19 that was about helping organizations with HR issues. And at first that was kind of a call-in center, and it has kind of morphed away from that and into a quarterly session with kind of a roundtable, even though we do it virtually, where arts leaders can come and talk about the issues that they’re facing and share information confidentially and get feedback on how to navigate HR issues. … I think that has been maybe most heartwarming to me about this work, when you can sit with someone, one-on-one, and develop a relationship, learn some things about them, help them to get through some tough things, and help them to know that they’ve got someone with experience that will deal with their problems confidentially. … We do a lot of professional development workshops and seminars, and as you get to know people and see them progress and go through their careers, it has really been a very positive thing for me.

QUESTION: Is there an artist or organization that you’ve watched develop who came to you for help early on, and now, as you’re looking back, you find their progress particularly gratifying?

SWAIN: The first one that comes to mind is Hill Dance Academy Theatre. They needed an attorney years ago … to help them get started with their governance issues and with paper filing and how to start an organization. And, most recently, we were able to supply them with an attorney who helped guide them through a real estate acquisition so that they now have their new performance home in the Hill District. I got so interested in their success that I joined their board not too long ago, because I wanted to help. 

QUESTION: As things wind down, is there anything in particular that you’re working on with your staff to get things ready for a transition?

SWAIN: We have a number of projects that we’re working on right now. My intention is to put together a kind of how-to guide of how we’ve done things in the past, understanding that things are going to change significantly. That’s exactly what you want in a leadership transition like this. The one project that we’re working on now that has some longevity to it is, in 2018, we produced a study on racial equity and arts funding, and that was a big deal. That’s the only one of its kind in the country, where we’ve taken a look at, at the local funding structure, understand who is asking for funds, who’s giving away the funds, and who they’re giving them to. No surprise, there were some real disparities that we uncovered. And because we had a majority BIPOC leadership committee that was helping us with this, we were able to create some recommendations that could be undertaken in the future, to make changes. We’ve seen some positive results from that, and we’re preparing right now to do a second take on that study. We were able to get a National Endowments for the Arts research grant to do it, which is a highly competitive thing, and I’m really proud of our staff’s work to qualify for that.

It is going to help us to do another study, later this year, to take a look at what happened five years ago, what’s changed, what are the trends, what can we uncover and what needs to be done, going forward. So that’s one of the things I’m going to be talking to my successor about, understanding that there’s someone coming in who will put their own stamp on things.

QUESTION: Do you plan to stay in the Pittsburgh area?

SWAIN: Yes. I’ve been working in the arts now for about 32 years, and I want to take a break. I still have some youth on my side. I want to do some other things that are kind of outside of the arts, but I’m going to take a few months off and do some some tinkering and some puttering and some painting and some housework, and just a little, bit of R&R for a while. 

QUESTION: Is there anything else you’d like to say before you ride into the sunset?

SWAIN: You know, when you’re CEO of an organization like this, you get the credit and, and sometimes the blame. But mostly, in this situation, I’ve gotten the credit for a lot of great things that other people have done. There have been some really phenomenal staff members and board members that I’ve been fortunate to work with. And had they not been involved, had other artists and, and other arts leaders not been involved and willing to work with the Arts Council, there’s many of the things that I’ve gotten credit for that wouldn’t have happened. I’m really indebted to the people who have worked at the Arts Council over the last 18 years. I’ve really been blessed to work with some great folks.

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Tags: Arts Advocacy, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Hill Dance Academy, Mitch Swain