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Arts Apprenticeship Training Program
Deep
in concentration making pinch pots.
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In Manchester, on Pittsburgh's North Side, is a state-of-the-art educational facility, home to two not-for-profit schools: the Bidwell Training Center and the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild (MCG). The difference is simple, says the founder of both, William E. Strickland, Jr.: "Bidwell sends adults to the work force; Manchester Craftsmen's Guild sends kids to college."
Founded by Strickland in 1968, the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild provides high quality arts education to minority, inner-city youth. The cornerstone of the Guild's program is the Apprenticeship Training Program. Master craftspeople, musicians, sculptors, photographers, and new media artists train nearly 400 children from a dozen Pittsburgh public high schools in this after-school program which offers free studio classes, workshops, lectures, and exhibition programs. In the Guildıs 350-seat concert hall, students also attend MCG concerts given by such dedicated supporters as Wynton Marsalis, the late Dizzy Gillespie, and the Count Basie Orchestra.
"The antidote for these "at-risk" children, we have discovered, is an environment with good architecture, good food, good artists, and good teachers who are allowed to function in well-equipped environments and who will not accept anything less than the best that the human imagination can provide," observes Strickland. Despite the glory, however, Strickland is not set on turning out the next generation of Pittsburgh jazz artists or, for that matter, any other kind of artists. Providing students with personal and career counseling, gallery and college trips, and student assistance with college application procedures, he has one goal uppermost in mind: Getting young people to go to college. With a 74 to 80 percent college placement rate, MCG's Apprenticeship Training Program is clearly focused and headed in the right direction.
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Arts
Apprenticeship Training Program
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild
1815 Metropolitan Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15233
Phone: 412-322-1773
Fax: 412-321-2120
E-Mail: Jpapada@MCG-BTC.org
URL: http:// www.artsnet.org/mcg
Focus: Ceramic Art, Drawing, Photography, Jazz Education, Computer
Imaging
Number Participating: 375
Ages: 11-19
Annual Budget: $480,000
"The kids who are flunking out of school, those are the ones I'm
after. I'm looking for the kid who still has a spark of life in
him, who says, I"m alive.""
William E. Strickland, Jr., President and CEO, Manchester Craftsmen"s
Guild
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