Bill Strickland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Australian rules footballer see Bill Strickland (footballer).

Bill Strickland (b. 1947) is the founder and CEO of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, an innovative nonprofit agency in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that uses the arts to inspire inner-city teenagers.

Strickland, a winner of a MacArthur Fellowship "genius" award, started the Manchester Craftmen's Guild while still an undergraduate in 1968 at the University of Pittsburgh. He added the Bidwell Training Center in 1972. Both reach out to disadvantaged young people with (respectively) the arts and job training.

The Guild is also home to a concert hall/recording studio, and won a Grammy on its first CD.

Strickland has also been honored by the White House and has served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts.

[edit] Books

• Make the Impossible Possible: One Man's Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary, (with Vince Rause) nonfiction (New York: Currency Books of Random House, 2007)

[edit] External links

• Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild website

[edit] References

• Caroline Abels (2002). Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Profile of Bill Strickland. Retrieved May 26, 2006.