The Jazz King - Improvising Hope
An Interview with Bill Strickland
Famed jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie once called Bill Strickland “one hell of a musician.” And although Strickland doesn’t play an instrument, this doesn’t make the statement any less true. Through life Strickland has had to improvise and play the notes given him. This “strategy” has led to an extraordinary program that has transformed the lives of thousands through the Manchester Bidwell Corporation.
Bill Strickland was kind enough to sit down and answer a couple questions about his center, his views on poverty, and-of course-jazz music.
TDS: Tell us a little bit about Manchester Bidwell.
STRICKLAND: The Bidwell training center is a vocational program designed to work with people that have lost their jobs or don’t have a job to begin with. Many of the students are in poverty. We provide them with market-specific training that begins with the skills, the aptitudes, and the direction that helps them turn their lives around. Many of them end up working for career-building centers like the culinary industry, technical industries, and so forth.
The program operates five days per week, twelve months per year. The vocational program is designed to work with underemployed adults, and the arts program, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, focuses its energy on at-risk public school students. Many of these students are not expected to graduate from the public school, yet we recruit them and put them in an arts program where they learn things like pottery, photography, and digital imaging. As a result, last year 90% of our program graduates graduated from high school and 92% of those went on to college.
TDS: You have made the distinction that Manchester Bidwell is not a poverty center but a center for success. How has this simple distinction changed people’s perception of the center?
STRICKLAND: We start off with the assumption that people are assets, not liabilities. When you run a poverty center, the assumption is that everyone is a liability and they are treated that way. We believe that life is precious, that people are born into the world as assets. It is their circumstances that limit their opportunities.
So, by changing the opportunities, we can change the behavior. By bringing students into a first class facility, with world-class technology and world-class faculty, we have been able to demonstrate effectively that we can take people who are considered liabilities on a balance sheet and move them to the asset side of the balance sheet so they become contributing members to society and to themselves.
TDS: In addition to making a distinction with the language you use, your center is unlike any other in the country. A fountain in the courtyard, fresh flowers, plenty of sunlight, good food, and handcrafted furniture are each important parts of the center. How has this set the tone for students?
STRICKLAND: When students walk in the front door, the facility and equipment send a powerful message—we are here for serious business. People are remarkably affected by their environments. If you build a world-class environment, you get world-class students. If you build a prison, you get prisoners. So the facility sets our expectations without us having to verbalize it; it defines behavior in the way the facility looks and is maintained. It actually sets the stage to have a serious conversation with the students by virtue of the fact they have enrolled to come here.
TDS: In your book, Make the Impossible Possible, you point out that you had no grand life plan or strategic vision but instead just followed the “longing in your heart.” This appears to oppose popular beliefs that say you must plan out what you want to do with your life and be intentional with your goals. Would you recommend your path for others? Why?
STRICKLAND: I would recommend my path to others who are intuitive and creative thinkers or entrepreneurs because they all tend to be similar. If you fall into one of those categories, I would strongly recommend that you operate from that basis. It has frequently been demonstrated that these types of thinkers hold a highly developed form of insight and intelligence. They are typically the people who come up with new ideas and make extraordinary contributions to society, and they are not traditional learners. The good news is that the world is full of these people.
TDS: How has passion for what you are pursuing guided you?
STRICKLAND: The passion, over time, when it is sustained, attracts interest and attention. I was able to verbalize these passions and feelings in a way that got people excited about the inner-city and my vision for the inner-city. This kind of work is not miracle work, its mainly good old-fashioned hard work.
You have to stay with it for a long time before you begin to see dividends, but I was the kind of persistent person that communicated to others that I was committed to this work. When you’ve been at something like this for more than thirty years you begin to recruit some believers along the way.
TDS: You mention that Manchester is your life, not your career. What is the difference?
STRICKLAND: A career tends to have a beginning and an end, usually fitting within established parameters. I see the procession of being the President of Manchester Bidwell as an open book. Even though we have accomplished a number of things thus far, there are still many things we hope to accomplish. We don’t think of it in terms of 9 to 5 and 5 days per week, we think in terms of 7 days per week.
I create environments for managers to be entrepreneurs in the way they think, which creates infinite opportunities and possibilities. Now, after establishing a program in Pittsburgh, we are replicating this idea around the country and eventually around the world. We believe this is going to be an open-ended conversation, clearly for the rest of my life.
TDS: You have gathered a unique community around Manchester Bidwell—producers, investors, musicians, etc. What role does community play in the success of Manchester Bidwell?
STRICKLAND: The community is the point of the story. Without the community there is no reason to do what we do. The measure of the success of Manchester Bidwell is determined by the impact we have on the community within which we operate. And you can be very concrete about that. It’s about how many at-risk kids that graduate from high school? How many went on to college? How many moms you help get out of welfare? How many workers employed by an industry or out of poverty and now taking care of their families? The direct benefit of Manchester Bidwell can be seen in the community through the lives we have touched.
TDS: In your book you state, “Jazz is one of the most powerful metaphors I’ve ever found for living an extraordinary life.” Would you elaborate?
STRICKLAND: The essence of jazz musicians is improvisation—they are musical entrepreneurs. Without any written music they are able to create compositions on a cold cloth. I think that is pretty extraordinary.
I think people who are able to improvise from the ingredients they are given in life are very similar to jazz musicians; they can create opportunities for themselves that others can’t see. This is particularly impactful for people that are poor. They may not have the opportunity or strategy or parts available to figure out a plan to get out of their current situation, so they need an improvisational strategy to get out of their unfortunate circumstances. And so the metaphor plays out: jazz music is born out of improvisation just as our people improvise their way to birthing a better future.
TDS: Could you give us a beginners guide to jazz music and recommend a couple of artists we should check out?
STRICKLAND: The work of Antonio Carlos Hobim, who is a very famous Brazilian. Miles Davis, who is a very strong and important jazz figure that brought the idea of simplicity to the music in the early 60’s and 70’s. Wes Montgomery, who was a giant on the guitar. Nancy Wilson, a great vocalist continuing to work and thrive even to this day. Betty Carter, Shirley Horn, there are a number of them, but these would be a good start to research and check out their music.
TDS: What is on the horizon for the success center? Can readers get involved, how?
STRICKLAND: Yes. The plan is to build 200 centers, 100 in the United States and 100 around the world. The book we have created, Make the Impossible Possible, tells this story and is primarily used to leverage this story to build centers. So, if you are interested, first read the book. If you are inspired by the book and are interested in building a center contact us or get involved in one of the existing centers. Or come to Pittsburgh. So we can have a conversation about attaching you to one of the centers we will be building in the future. So, there are many levels of how readers can get involved in one of our centers.
If you enjoyed this interview, you can subscribe to Trap Door Sun via email or using RSS. You can also join our Facebook fan page.