top of page

About

Our Mission

Swords into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery is a home for cultural organizing, celebration, and struggle. Our space hosts socially conscious art exhibitions, community events, film screenings, and organizing work.  Our foundational goal was to use culture to bring people together around shared values of peace and justice.


We see peace as being something that is built, not declared. To really achieve peace you need not the absence of open conflict, but rather the presence of justice. True peace must mean that people have food, housing, education, healthcare, support, and stability in their lives. Without these things, without genuine liberation,  peace is just quiet oppression.

History

The Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery was founded in 1985 through the visionary leadership of Jim Brista, alongside members of Central United Methodist Church and a coalition of local community advocates. Together, they imagined a space where art could be a tool for transformation. From the beginning, our mission has been to use culture as a bridge, bringing people together across differences to imagine and build a more just, peaceful world.

 

For nearly 40 years, Swords Into Plowshares has remained a home for artists, organizers, and visionaries from around the globe. We have showcased powerful exhibitions, hosted community conversations, and supported movements for social change—always grounded in our belief that art can challenge injustice, heal divisions, and ignite collective action.

IMG_4723_edited.jpg
IMG_0754 (1)_edited.jpg

Meet Our Director

Ian Matchett is a queer socialist midwestern painter. He was raised in West Michigan, and attended UM Ann Arbor, receiving degrees in Political Science and Studio Art in 2014. Since graduating he has lived in Detroit, helping found The Brick and Mortar Collective and The Michigan Student Power Network, and in 2021 was named Director of Swords into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery. His work is focused on the use of history, art, and memory as tools for social change. He has shown and sold work both locally and nationally, and teaches at the College for Creative Studies. 

Meet The Board

bottom of page