Our Mission
ART ASAP: The Art Bus targets under-served students living in the seven-county metro area, offering them quality After School Arts Programming. Youth exposed to poverty, violence, or addiction will be empowered using creative and constructive outlets through the art-making process. The Art Bus, a Metro Transit Authority bus that has been transformed into a mobile art studio, travels to the students where they live. Transporting quality art supplies and professional teaching artist-mentors to affordable housing complexes, meaningful relationships are created based on common bonds of culture, creativity, and circumstance over an extended session. Art ASAP, Inc is a nonprofit organization incorporated in the State of Minnesota.
What We Do
The Art Bus is an 10’ x 40’ MTA bus reconfigured into an art studio that accommodates at least twenty students and six adult project leaders. The bus has three types of studio stations to adapt to different learning styles. Portfolio storage for each student is located at the rear with all supplies and materials provided for free so there is no economic barrier to participation.
Focusing on 4th through 8th graders during weekly art classes, The Art Bus takes access and the transformational power of the arts to the street, providing creative outlets over a sustained period of time. Media used will be acrylics, pen & ink, charcoal, pastels, watercolors, and graphite among others. Most projects will take one to three sessions. Projects are designed to offer quality arts experiences; we do not use a cookie cutter approach to arts activities.
Using a variety of 2-dimensional media, artists encourage vulnerable youth to make works of art that channel emotions into creative and meaningful acts. The goal is to have a positive impact in the lives of the participants over the period of art classes. A primary goal is to develop artist-mentor relationships, crucial at the age when participants navigate the difficult period of childhood through adolescence. Artists will work with youth and encourage participants to express their energy, good and bad, in the process of making art. The results for the kids will be tangible: works of art that they can take away from the experience in the form of a portfolio. At the end of the project, a gallery show of the works created on The Art Bus will instill a sense of pride of accomplishment for the participants and their families.
ART ASAP: The Art Bus™ is the future model to take transportation and finances out of the opportunity gap for educational and arts programming for youth.
Focusing on 4th through 8th graders during weekly art classes, The Art Bus takes access and the transformational power of the arts to the street, providing creative outlets over a sustained period of time. Media used will be acrylics, pen & ink, charcoal, pastels, watercolors, and graphite among others. Most projects will take one to three sessions. Projects are designed to offer quality arts experiences; we do not use a cookie cutter approach to arts activities.
Using a variety of 2-dimensional media, artists encourage vulnerable youth to make works of art that channel emotions into creative and meaningful acts. The goal is to have a positive impact in the lives of the participants over the period of art classes. A primary goal is to develop artist-mentor relationships, crucial at the age when participants navigate the difficult period of childhood through adolescence. Artists will work with youth and encourage participants to express their energy, good and bad, in the process of making art. The results for the kids will be tangible: works of art that they can take away from the experience in the form of a portfolio. At the end of the project, a gallery show of the works created on The Art Bus will instill a sense of pride of accomplishment for the participants and their families.
ART ASAP: The Art Bus™ is the future model to take transportation and finances out of the opportunity gap for educational and arts programming for youth.