Welcome aboard the Arts Bus Project!
A morning of fun at Braintree Elementary School.
The Arts Bus, a mobile art studio, pocket theater, music space and library, has become a familiar and welcome sight along the country roads and the villages of central Vermont, bringing free art activities to children and youth. The bus travels to preschools and in-home child cares, elementary schools, after-school and summer recreation programs, public libraries, and community stops, and appears at public events.
Our Mission
Team costume making.
The Arts Bus Project was conceived as a response to the continuing need of children to have a deep and meaningful exposure to the arts. Because, over many years, the authors of the Arts Bus Project have been able to observe the impact of the arts on our children, we know that learning through the arts and living with the arts are not peripheral but basic in the educating process, and that a continuing proximity to the arts accelerates development during early childhood and every subsequent growth stage. We also know that non-verbal aesthetic development, skills and sensitivity are magical and much underrated elements of a whole and balanced life. Conversely, the first Screen Generation which has grown into adulthood with its collective consciousness attached to fast-action television and computer-game images and sounds has sustained physiological changes in the brain that lead to measurable losses of sensitivity, intellection and decision-making skills. Many aspects of American education and society compromise the idea that the arts and the senses should be central to the learning experience of children and young adults and the idea that the arts should be a basic component of the curriculum and given parity with all other elements. It is our hope that a positive experience with the Arts Bus within our communities will encourage a broader understanding of what a gift the arts can be to a child and what gifts creative children can bring to the world.
The Arts Bus Project / c/o Kimball Public Library, 67 Main Street, Randolph, VT 05060 / 802-728-5073 / artsbus@Chandler-arts.org