The Carnegie Arts Center, in collaboration with Jeffrey Lewis of Legacy Health Foundation and the EMC Health Foundation, is set to host five discussions in 2020 addressing issues around children and mental health.

The first discussion will be led by guest speaker Bill Strickland, founder of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation – an extraordinary jobs training center and community arts program. This event will take place at 7 p.m.  Jan. 9 at the Carnegie, 250 N. Broadway in Turlock. This will be a free event that is open to the public. Following the event will be a free dessert reception and book signing.

Strickland uses the arts, education, job training, job creation, and economic development to reclaim neighborhoods from urban decay. 

While balancing a job as an airline pilot with his community work, he developed the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, a multicultural, multidisciplinary, alternative learning center in Pittsburgh, where educational programs engage young people in learning through mentored training in the arts. 

The guild conducts an accredited program that integrates the arts with core academic studies, an after-school program, summer programs, and places artists in the schools. 

Equal to the guild’s national prominence in arts education is its status as one of the nation’s foremost concert venues for jazz, featuring performers in concert throughout the year.  Strickland also heads the Bidwell Training Center, an accredited vocational training center for displaced workers. 

He was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1996, and is the author of “Across the Spectrum” (1987), a primer for the development of arts education, and “Make the Impossible Possible” (2008).

Dates and specific topics for the remaining four lectures in this groundbreaking series will be forthcoming.

For more information, visit: carnegieartsturlock.org