"When more than 200 city leaders from various Lexington institutions took to Boulder, Colo., for the annual Commerce Lexington Leadership Visit in mid-May, another contingency of local community members went to Pittsburgh to witness the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, a 62,000-square-foot arts and career training center, with the hopes of eventually establishing a similar facility here in Lexington.
What started as a small shotgun house offering simple ceramics courses has now blossomed into a $12 million a year operation, capable of providing training for adults in chemical, office and medical technologies as well as gourmet food preparation — all working in tandem with classes for young people in subjects like photography, computer animation, clothing design and screen printing. There's even a Grammy-winning recording studio on the premises.
In its humble beginnings in 1968, the facility, originally just the Manchester Craftmen's Guild, was a destination for inner-city youth in Pittsburgh who might have been going down the same path as Bill Strickland, now the president and CEO of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC), in his more formative years. Strickland, who is known as one of the country's leading social entrepreneurs, was about to become a high-school drop out, but after finding a sense of creativity after being introduced to pottery, he went on to graduate from college. Civic interest in the facility grew, as did the course offerings. Strickland, because of his proven track record, was asked to assume leadership of an adult vocational educational program called the Bidwell Training Center. In 1999, the two entities merged into the Manchester Bidwell Corporation (MBC), which offers administrative assistance to each of its subsidiaries.
In 2003, the Cincinnati Arts & Technology Center became the first national affiliate of the MBC, and additional facilities followed, including sites in San Francisco and Grand Rapids, Mich. By identifying the workforce needs of each community, the sites received financial and material support from local corporations, which had a vested interest in having a pool of trained professionals readily available that is familiar with the equipment and the industry.
"It's pretty much geared toward what the needs are locally," said Jim Embry, a Lexington community leader who visited the Pittsburgh site in May and is involved in the Bluegrass Initiative with Bidwell. "It's not meant to be like a cookie-cutter for whatever goes on in Pittsburgh has to go on elsewhere. What they're able to do is train on the exact same equipment, so there's no downtime, there's no additional training, and companies love that."
Embry noted that a few corporations that are supportive of facilities in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are also located here in the region, such as Johnson Controls, Inc. and Toyota. There is also a large health care industry located in Lexington. Aside from automotive and health care training possibilities, training in Lexington could also be offered to take on the influential environmental movement sweeping through industries.
"Everything now is about greening this and greening that, but we're not really preparing the workforce adequately enough to go out in larger numbers and help to improve the overall environmental quality," Embry said.
But the Manchester Bidwell Corporation won't simply decide to build a facility in any given location around the nation. The company will function as an umbrella organization only after the local community has laid the initial groundwork, such as building strong local support and awareness about the initiative, gathering a sense of commitment of support from the different corporate sectors, the public school systems and universities, and the local government. It's also vital to have support from the arts community.
"The local community shares the responsibility of doing the study, getting the support, getting the financial support, studying what's available facility-wise and then deciding where to located. Manchester is more of an advisory capacity," Embry said.
The MBC won't dictate who is hired or what is taught at an affiliate facility, but certain criteria must be met. Arts training must be the foundation. After school training must be provided to middle and high school students, as well as adult vocational training. The facility also must be as aesthetically pleasing as another corporate facility.
"If you're teaching a facility for inner-city young people, and what you're teaching in is trashy and beat up, run down, then their expectations are based upon what they see," Embry said. "But if you provide a beautiful environment that's clean, that's as fine as a corporate office, then the expectations are raised to that level."
With so many new initiatives in Lexington, Embry says the Bluegrass Initiative with Bidwell fits in with the larger framework of efforts to improve the community.
"People grab a sense of their larger humanity through art, and by grabbing this greater sense of their own humanity, they're able to be citizens of a community that can be a part of this larger effort of transformation of our city," he said.
Another group of interested community members will be traveling to the Cincinnati and Pittsburgh areas on Aug. 7-8 to gather more information on those facilities and for a local feasibility study.