Today we’d like to introduce you to Carl Swanson.
Carl, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I am a third culture kid, although I’ve lived in Minnesota for a over 20 years now, I grew up overseas, in Cairo, Egypt, and Rome, Italy. My parents are Lutheran pastors, and were teaching and studying over there, and our family didn’t move to the US until I was 14. And then we moved from Cairo, a city of 19 million people in the middle of the desert, to St. Paul, so that was quite a bit of climate and culture shock!
After finishing high school, I went to college in Los Angeles, to the University of Southern California, to study art, and I made a lot of theater when I was there. I worked on political campaigns doing doorknocking and canvassing for groups like the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, and Environment California during and right out of college, and then moved back to the Twin Cities, where I have worked in arts and culture, in nonprofits, and now as a consultant for almost 20 years.
I have served on the boards of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Dissonance, which advocates for health and wellness in the creative sectors, and Twin Cities Catalyst Music. In my personal creative practice I am now mainly a writer and a poet, and occasionally get things published. I am married to an attorney who is also a concert photographer – we met going to shows. We now have two boys and two cats and live in South Minneapolis.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think every career has its ups and downs, and its twists and turns. I would say that one of the key struggles and parts of my identity that I share publicly is that I have been sober since 2008. I was in my early 20s, but had been using alcohol and drugs since my teenage years, mostly as a way to socialize and connect with people. Over time that really grew into an addiction and it was the intervention of my family that got me rehab support. Minnesota has a public safety net for chemical dependency and I am a firm believer in the necessity of that kind of public investment to make sure that we have a healthy state and society. I made the commitment early on in my recovery that I was going to be public and vocal about it, both as a way to be accountable to myself and my community, and as a way to ensure that others who may be struggling quietly know they are not alone and change is possible. I also made a commitment to myself that I wasn’t going to stop being engaged in going out to shows and at venues – which can be spaces with lots of intoxicants – but that I had permission to walk away from anything that wasn’t feeling right.
I think the other struggle that I have felt, and I know others have too, is that it can be a very winding or zig-zagging road to make a meaningful creative career. I have often had to be out of my comfort zone, or feeling like the arts guy in a business setting, or the business guy in an arts setting, so there is always a feeling in-betweenness. We get told a lot about how success and careers are like marathons – you pick the goal, and just keep moving towards it. I prefer the analogy of a soccer player (not just because I love soccer) because in that frame of success, you keep moving, find teammates, and try to work together towards a goal.
As you know, we’re big fans of Cast Consulting. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I run Cast Consulting, which is my own business primarily focusing on facilitation, strategic planning, and operations & communications work with creative nonprofits and mission-driven businesses. I have run Cast for just over 5 years, starting as a side business and now working as a full time job.
Cast really comes out of a fundamental question that I’ve asked myself over the course of my life and career, which is, “How can I be useful in this community?” I have always been in the arts, I was a creative kid and did my undergraduate degree in visual arts and made theater as an actor and writer. After college and some time working on political canvassing campaigns, I came to the Twin Cities and started making theater in the community – at the old Bedlam theater on the West Bank, and then in a couple different companies, Lamb Lays with Lion and Umbrella Collective. The answer to “how can I be useful” then was to be in people’s things, and make creative work.
That continued to expand as I started writing more about arts and culture, doing interviews, scene reports, and criticism. That opened doors to be connected to a lot of different genres and communities – music, dance, fashion, theater, and art – and to build audiences and awareness about what was happening. In turn, that became supporting bands and creative projects with PR and marketing, building new relationships and opportunities.
In 2012, I started working at Springboard for the Arts, and also started an MBA program at the University of St. Thomas. My being useful evolved into supporting more structural opportunities, and also working on being a bridge between the creative people running and making the work, and the kinds of boards filled with lawyers and businesses, and the professional services needed for longevity. I stayed at Springboard for almost 11 years, working on local artist resources, national storytelling platforms and toolkits for creative projects, and a capital campaign for a new facility on University Avenue in St. Paul.
During the Covid-19 pandemic I worked on advocacy issues for the creative sector, and supported emergency relief funds for artists at Springboard as well as a national fund for independent venues, clubs, and theaters for the National Independent Venue Association. In 2023, I worked as the Executive Director of the National Independent Venue Foundation to continue that work and develop new professional resources that continue on today.
Now I am focused on Cast Consulting, doing it full time for almost a year and a half at this point. In this work, I do a lot of facilitation for boards and leadership teams, as well as strategic framework and planning work, to get to the questions about organizational values and what steps to take. I like being able to combine my creative practice and training, as well as business structures and analysis, and create something that is bespoke and responsive to where an organization is in their journey and with their community or audience. My clients are both in the arts & culture sector, and also with mission-driven organizations that are looking to build in and with community. A lot of my work is focused around the Twin Cities, but I also do some national work, as well as with organizations in rural spaces – those kinds of questions of how we are creating and sustaining spaces for people to connect and share their creativity and values are really central to me right now. I try to keep on finding ways to be useful!
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I want to take the long view of success. Of course I love it when a facilitation goes well and a group has a breakthrough, or I help with a successful grant or fundraising campaign, but I really do want success to be measured in the longterm health of our creative communities and our mission-driven work. If we have healthy communities where artists of all kinds can make a living, and where people feel connected to one another, where it’s normal for people to care about a wide variety of topics, and where we make space for people to be themselves and thrive together, that’s what I want to call success. Of course, I can’t be responsible for all that, and it is a much bigger effort, but I do believe that it has to start with us on the ground doing the work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://castconsulting.co/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/catiyas
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlatiyaswanson/
- Other: https://www.carlatiyaswanson.com/
