The Turrell Fund is proud to highlight one of the 2025 Landon Award winners: The Arts Bus!
What is The Arts Bus?
The Arts Bus is a mobile art studio and makerspace that travels throughout Vermont year-round on a mission to empower children to find joy and authentic self-expression through the arts.
What sets The Arts Bus apart is its goal to close the “opportunity gap” that exists between children and quality arts enrichment.
The Art Bus’s Work
The Arts Bus’s Art from the Start program specifically serves children under 5 years old with a focus on exploring the arts with open-ended play and multi-sensory exploration.
Activities include:
- 7 Senses of Art
- Puppets + Percussion
- Be a Superhero
- Hands-Fingers-Feet-Toes Painting
- Clay Play
- The Wittles Reading and Coloring Together Time
Art from the Start introduces motor skill development, as children hold and grasp different mediums to create art.
This program allows children to develop cognitive skills as they recognize colors and patterns, think critically to make design choices, learn to count, and verbalize exploration.
How The Arts Bus Expands Art Access
The Arts Bus approach is to meet children where they are, especially in rural and low-income areas.
Recognizing the lack of arts education resources and availability, The Arts Bus brings everything with it – art educators, a studio classroom, art supplies, puppet theatre, reading circle and furniture that’s knee-high to a grasshopper for the littlest artists!
Because of grants like the Landon Award, sponsors, donors & program partners, The Arts Bus is always free to board, allowing children and families of all socio-economic backgrounds to hop on board its “artventure tour” that makes over 150 stops each year!
In the past 15 years, The Arts Bus has visited over 40 Vermont communities and continues to be a leader in the arts access space.
The Turrell Fund congratulates The Arts Bus and supports its mission to ensure every child in Vermont has access to quality arts enrichment programs – from the very start of life!
