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When the wheels on this bus go round and round, there will be a smile to go with it.
Thanks to a local artist and a group of high school students, a rolling piece of urban art hits London streets this summer.
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“People will look at it (the bus), smile, and have energy. It’s a good, interesting, engaging piece of artwork rolling on four wheels,” London artist Andrew Lewis said.
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He’s leading the project’s design for the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of London this year and working with students from the Thames Valley District school board.
It’s the third year for the bus project.
“The major part of this project is empowering student voices so they are represented in the community. Another impact has been the opportunity for students to collaborate,” Laura Briscoe, the board’s innovation learning co-ordinator, said.
The theme of the design is equity in action and more than 15 students from Thames Valley board schools are helping to paint Lewis’s design of faces, eyes, hearts and mouths.
The artwork aims to represent multiple intersecting student identities along with all backgrounds, abilities, and lived experiences, board equity learning co-ordinator Matt Sereda said.
The theme came from a brainstorming session with students who suggested different ideas to highlight and represent equity, Briscoe said.
“As the bus travels throughout the city and students see the bus, hopefully, they feel affirmed by the artwork,” Sereda said.
In its early stages still, the bus is mostly covered in black-and-white drawings, but “it’ll be hundreds of little drawings and words all over this thing, which will be very interesting,” Lewis said.
“But what it is, I can’t tell you. That’s their thing,” he said.
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