With the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference returning to Pittsburgh, quite a few people will visit Bill Strickland’s little miracle in Manchester. Astute observers may guess that Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) is housed in a building designed by the same guy who designed the airport — Tasso Katselas. Whose teacher was Frank Lloyd Wright. And right they would be.

Why is this significant? Because the building was built for poor people. Those are Bill’s words, not mine.

Everyone’s welcome at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, though, regardless of race, national origin, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. One of Bill's guiding philosophies is that environment shapes behavior. He believes that if you put people in a world-class facility, and expose them to world-class food, art, and architecture, their sense of self and aspirations soar. This includes everyone, from the kids at MCG to the adults preparing for careers in the adjoining Bidwell Training Center, to the musicians who perform in the Grammy Award–winning MCG Jazz concert hall.

Bill’s heart is in the MCG ceramics studio, where he reconnects with his origins as a potter and recharges his will to do the hard work of visionary leadership. It’s got a wall full of windows to let natural light in, and shelf after shelf of world-class pottery from around the world, including a stunning Akio Takamori piece right in the middle.

In this studio, inner-city kids are glazing their first forays into pottery with copper reds, and having those works reduction-fired in a downdraft, gas, car kiln. At no cost. High school kids can pug out 25 pounds of white stoneware, throw to their heart’s content, and go pug another log. And do it again the next day.

Naturally, it’s not without guidance. The list of people who learned, worked, or taught in the MCG ceramics studio is a veritable who’s who of Pittsburgh ceramic artists, not least of all, NCECA’s own executive director, Joshua Green, and hometown boy done good, Sharif Bey.

The photograph above captures the conclusion of an exemplary MCG course, titled Stop, Collaborate, and Listen, which was created by the teaching artist with the bright blue hair — Talon Smith. The true beauty of the course was that it ran in conjunction with a course of the same name in MCG’s design arts studio (led by the smiling bespectacled gentleman in the background, Ben Pyles).

“The class was created to coincide with National Clay Week on the theme of ‘Collaboration,’ ” co-instructor Talon Smith explains. “Students from diverse backgrounds were able to share their interdisciplinary techniques to create beautiful works of art. This class gave our students the opportunity to learn new skills from one another, how to communicate ideas effectively, and how to execute those ideas productively.”

The class was featured during National Clay Week in an hour-long, interactive live stream on Instagram, and was subsequently featured in an article in Ceramics Monthly.

Bill’s reaction?

“That’s cool, man.”

Remember, he runs a jazz program, too.