ZineZone: Good evening everyone! Welcome to ZineZone!

ZineZone: Bill Strickland drifted through high school until a gifted teacher opened his eyes to ceramics, jazz, and a world of learning. It would ignite a lifelong passion to help high schoolers, and others, in his Pittsburgh community, resulting in his winning a MacArthur Genius Award last year.

ZineZone: Please join us in welcoming Bill Strickland to ZineZone and Talk City!

Bill_Strickland: It's nice to be here...even my daughter is here at the chat, on-line! I welcome the opportunity to offer some of my ideas in a different medium, one different from what I usually do with slides, but it challenges me to express ideas to a different constituency. Glad to be here!

SueDM: For those of us who might not be familiar with your work, Bill, would you give us a thumbnail sketch of your many projects?

Bill_Strickland: They break down into three areas. One is the arts. I was trained as a ceramics artist in high school here in the '60s. That was very profound and life-changing for me. Frank Ross was a teacher who changed my horizons for the better. My involvement made me a better student, much more focused, gave me direction, and I felt I belonged and had a contribution to make. That helped me get accepted at the University of Pittsburgh, where I tried to replicate my inner city high school experience, using clay as the medium of communication. This was the beginnings of the Manchester project. Because I did a good job with that, the board of the Bidwell Cultural and Training Effort approached me about taking over the Bidwell Center and running it, since they had fallen on hard times. So in 1972, I became the Executive Director of the Center, and rebuilt it to make it a market-specific training center that specializes in technology and service areas for single parents and those on welfare. We get at-risk school children re-connected, and get between 75 and 85 percent of our students into college each year, using the arts as the medium of intervention. In the case of disadvantaged students, we can place 80 percent into specialized industries. This includes chemical lab technicians, pharmaceutical technicians, culinary arts trainees, corporate travel agents for the airlines and American Express, and we are now branching out into medical claims processing and medical secretaries, and we soon will add Injection Molding. Bayer, Alcoa, Calgon Carbon, BASF, Aristech, IBM, Mellon Bank and Heinz are all companies we have worked with. We have been fortunate to work with Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies to place previously unemployed people into the workplace. Enterprise is the third dimension, having created a for-profit food company at the school, and we do institutional food management. We have gotten contracts with places like National City Bank and the Andy Warhol Museum, and have just secured two research facilities with PPG.

SueDM: Don't you also have a jazz record label?

Bill_Strickland: We also do high-definition recording. We won one Grammy, and have been nominated for a second for recordings we helped create. We want to create an independent jazz label, and take product into the marketplace. This would help us get substantial profits to begin endowing our school. We are approaching Starbucks and other companies to find retail outlets for the recordings. Our next effort in community services is real estate development. We have created a Real Estate division called Bidco and are finishing an $8 million dollar office complex adjacent to our facilities. The next project that will accompany the office building is a high-technology greenhouse, where we will grow hydroponic vegetables and orchids, using advanced technology. Our partners include on this effort Zuma Orchids of Malibu, CA.

guest-fed says: Do you use the Internet in promoting arts?

Bill_Strickland: Yes. Our students have developed a small Web site of their own, and actively are using the Net to communicate around the world with other students, and for gathering info for their portfolios. Each student has their own portfolio on CD-ROM for R&D purposes. If you're interested in our site, look up Manchester Craftsman's Guild on the Net, and you'll find the site listed.

guest-jenn10: Do all of your kids know exactly what sort of art they'd like to make? How do you help them find their inner voice?

Bill_Strickland: They do not know the art they want to make. When we recruit them, we give demonstrations of the different arts, and they select what they want to study based on the presentation. The form is not the motivating factor, we find, but relating to the teachers and wanting to do something with their lives. They take a cross-section, such as clay and photography and imaging, so it's an integrated policy. We aren't concerned that they go to college to study the Arts, but to use it to motivate them to achieve more and to heighten their self-esteem. We notice that their attendance gets better and so do their grades when they get involved in the arts program.

guest-stef says: How do you facilitate arts for disabled children? Do you have a separate trained staff and set-up for that?

Bill_Strickland: Our primary population is not disabled, but we have some staff who are sensitive to those needs when they arise. When there is an unusual need, for example in Pennsylvania, the state will provide specialized instructors who have more knowledge than we do. But we feel that we all have the imagination and the ability to create and learn. Our vocational program actually trained our first chef who couldn't hear, and one also with only one arm. Both are very successful in the industry now. We had assistance from the state in teaching them both.