With the support of a $3 million grant awarded by the Cleveland Foundation in 2008, NewBridge Cleveland Center for Arts and Technology opened in MidTown in the fall of 2010. The airy high-tech building houses a vocational program that prepares adults for careers as phlebotomy and pharmacy technicians and after-school arts classes for teens poised on the brink of quitting school. NewBridge is modeled after Pittsburgh’s highly successful Manchester Bidwell training center, which has been in operation since 1968.

The foundation led a collaborative effort to replicate the Manchester Bidwell program here. Cleveland’s leading medical institutions advised on the design of the adult curricula, resulting in a high rate of employment of the 36 adults who graduated in 2011 and 2012.

More than 350 ninth- and 10th-graders selected by 40 high schools from across the county attended free, hands-on classes in ceramics, photography, digital arts, and music recording and production during the 2011–12 academic year. In contrast to usual turnout for afterschool programs, which often fail to attract young men, 55 percent of the attendees were male. The foundation affirmed its belief in NewBridge’s effectiveness with a second grant of $1.5 million in 2011.