FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Urban economic developer to speak at Bates

LEWISTON, Maine -- William Strickland, creator of successful job training programs involving the arts, will deliver a lecture titled "The Arts, Education, Economic Growth and Community Building" as part of the Creative Approach to Public Policy lecture series at Bates College November 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. The public is invited and admission is free.

Through years of balancing his job as an airline pilot with community work, Strickland developed the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, an alternative learning center in Pittsburgh that provides arts education for inner-city youth and young adults. In an area where fewer than half of all high school students go on to college, 80 percent of the Guild's students do so. Strickland also is the executive director of the Bidwell Training Center, which provides specialized job training for inner-city youth. An appointee to the National Council on the Arts, he is the author of "Across the Spectrum," a primer for developing arts education.

Strickland, who was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1996, received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh.