You could say that Metro Arts CEO Kieran Swann grew up in parallel with the Brisbane cultural institution he now leads.

“I was 11, I think, the first time I got dropped off at the front doors for some kind of movie marathon,” Swann recalls of the original location on Edward Street in the city. “I would come in after school to do drama workshops or art workshops. And then going to study at QUT had all sorts of connections to the creative community that brought me back to that building over and over again.”

Fast forward two decades and the designer, visual artist and arts leader has found himself at the helm of the organisation, which in 2020 moved to West End.

Swann commenced his role in August last year. He observed the programming which pre-dated his arrival, and then did something surprising – he hit the pause button, halting the public-facing program of performances and exhibitions for the first half of 2026.

He has called this process a “rewiring” rather than apply the more prosaic corporate speak of a rebrand.

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“It is really about figuring out and taking a close look at a bunch of the systems that have propped the organisation up for 45 years,” Swann explains. “In moving from the city to West End, there were a lot of program structures, but also working processes that just got transported over wholesale. It’s a very different environment, so we have to think carefully about how we’re working in this different context.

“Beyond the physical locale, the way the arts in Australia operates has changed drastically. There’s a huge diminishing of public funding available to the arts when you compare it in real terms to what was available 20 years ago.”

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Although Swann did not anticipate Metro Arts taking an extended break under his leadership, there was some muscle memory at play. Before returning home, the Brisbane State High alumnus was based in the UK for an extended period. This included a role at Arnolfini, Bristol’s centre for contemporary arts, which froze its exhibition program in response to a substantial funding cut. In time, the organisation re-engineered its financial models, which provided the federal arts body with the confidence to invest in its vision once more.

When Swann approached the Metro Arts board with his radical idea, they were receptive.

“I took the board on a journey – talking about why it was so advantageous for the organisation to step off the treadmill for a moment,” he says. “I think arts organisations are so used to just running threadbare constantly, and we set ourselves these constant deadlines with public-facing moments back-to-back to back-to-back that it feels impossible to carve out time; to really look at the mechanics of how and why we’re doing that.”

To exist as an Australian arts organisation is to navigate the ever-shifting tides of government funding. Metro Arts received major grants from Creative Australia between 2017 and 2024, but its application spanning 2025-2028 was unsuccessful. (Arts Queensland support has remained steady throughout the past two decades, however.)

The 2019 sale of the Metro Arts building in the Brisbane CBD generated a reported $10.5 million. A significant slice of that money was used to build a new arts precinct that opened in West Village in September 2020. The remaining money anchors an investment fund used to cultivate new work.

“What the board and I have really been working on is making sure our drawdown policy from that fund is responsible and stable,” Swann explains. “For a couple of years after the organisation lost Creative Australia funding, the previous leadership did dig into the capital here to prop up some of the programming and the operations, but that’s something that we are taking a really clear stance on that we are not doing anymore.”

Crucially, the work that Metro Arts does as an incubator of new Australian art has continued behind the scenes.

“I knew that as we were taking this step to pull back on public-facing work for the first half of this year, investing in development and creation was essential,” Swann says. “It had to happen both for artist livelihoods, but also to make sure that when we come back to full producing mode, we have well-developed and rigorously made work for audiences.”

‘I’ve started using the phrase future-focussed art because I think it really tells the story of where we are aiming to go in the long term’

Swann and his team have held multiple town halls in recent months to engage with the creative community, and involve them in the next chapter of development. The response has been largely positive.

“They have seen the strain that Metro Arts has been under for a while, and so I think it is buoying them to see that we're taking the opportunity to do this kind of work of care, and repair, and maintenance. They are equally appreciative of the support through development and residency programs, but I think in the longer term, they are just happy to know that this kind of deep work is happening that’s going to strengthen what we do for much longer.”

The Metro Arts visual art program recommences in July, with live performance returning in September, as part of the Brisbane Festival. Swann hints that the first tranche of new works will feature “some well-loved Brisbane names”. (A dedicated part of the Metro Arts website – Start Here – allows creatives to directly pitch their ideas to the organisation.)

In many ways, the rewiring will reconnect Metro Arts with its roots. Swann notes that the original Metro Arts location was a home for diverse artforms including cinema, music, and jewellery making. (Today, the organisation sits on the West End site of the former Peters Ice Cream Factory, which was a haven for visual artists for many years.)

“Metro Arts is a spiritual home for contemporary and experimental practice that is unlike anything you’ll see elsewhere in Brisbane and is really pushing the edges, the boundaries of arts practice,” Swann says.

“I’ve started using the phrase future-focussed art because I think it really tells the story of where we are aiming to go in the long term.”
metroarts.com.au