Bill Strickland, president and CEO of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC), knows a lot about using what might be considered wrong thinking to find real, elegant solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. His genius is in the remaking of not only formal and logistical considerations, but in encouraging reconsideration about what needs fixing in the first place.

This is how social entrepreneurship begins, and Strickland is one of the people making it happen. MBC is one of the most successful training and educational centers in the nation, and its subsidiaries, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) and Bidwell Training Center, with Strickland at the helm, have created a poetic solution to an entire spectrum of social problems that have plagued an inner-city community in Pittsburgh for decades. By offering the very best facilities, training, equipment, and instructors to an economically disadvantaged or underemployed segment of the workforce, MBC helps create positive change in every sector of the community.

The MCG began in 1968 as a row house in Strickland’s home community, a neighborhood called Manchester on the north side of Pittsburgh. In his own words, the concept was simple: to inspire kids to do well in school and in life through exposure to the fine arts and good design. In a nutshell, says Strickland, the formula was “good design, good equipment, free clay.” Initially offering ceramics classes and a modest exhibition space for student work, MCG has now expanded to a 62,000-square-foot building shared by the Bidwell Training Center. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s former student Tasso Katsalas, the building that houses the two facilities is an impressive space; it is light-filled and warm, with every wall and corner occupied by sculptures, paintings, and quilts purchased from or on exhibit by working artists, or by exhibitions of work made at the center.

The facility boasts dozens of classrooms and labs, a beautiful ceramics studio with multiple kilns, a photography lab and darkroom, a graphic design lab, a 350-seat concert hall where jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock have played, a Grammy Award-winning record label, a state-of-the-art recording studio, a beautiful gallery, and much more. Most importantly, MCG changes the lives and minds of more than 2,500 underserved Pittsburgh public school students every year by providing mentoring, exposure to a fine arts education, and by instilling in them the confidence and motivation to continue their education and to become responsible, creative members of their communities.

The results are not just theoretical. In 2003 and 2004, 100 percent of high school seniors involved with MCG after-school programs graduated—over 20 percent more than the Pittsburgh Public High School graduation rate. The focus of the Bidwell Training Center is on vocational education serving underemployed or out-of-work adults in the Pittsburgh area, providing— again—top-notch equipment and training in high-tech, culinary, horticultural, and medical fields.