OUR MISSION: Through
arts education and community partnerships, The Imagine Bus Project
engages and inspires incarcerated youth, and youth impacted by the
juvenile justice system. We enable self-expression and positive personal
development, so that young people can successfully re-enter their
communities and find a path to a fulfilling future.
THE IMAGINE BUS PROJECT ENVISIONS:
- Juvenile Justice system-entangled youth who are able to express
themselves creatively and healthfully, take risks safely, and plan for a
fulfilling, positive future.
- Involvement in the Juvenile Justice system as an opportunity for
personal reflection, transformation, and growth for adjudicated young
people.
- Our program model demonstrating achievement of healthy
self-expression, improved personal development, a positive future
orientation; and, can be replicated or adapted to reach more
system-involved youth.
ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW: The Imagine Bus Project delivers cross-cultural learning experiences
that focus on relationship building and art as tools for problem
solving. We focus on exposing youth to creative opportunities and
artists with the belief that art has the power to save lives and put
adjudicated youth on a path towards a future, in which they are healthy
and empowered to lead creative and productive lives.
TIBP’s Theory of Change models that youth need a creative vehicle to
build confidence through creativity, develop meaningful skills through
their craft, and connect with their communities in order to break the
cycle of incarceration.
OUR HISTORY: The Imagine Bus Project's visionary and passionate founder, Susan Little, began in 1998 with a mission to bring art to inner city kids in San Francisco to help break the isolation they faced. Upon learning that there were hundreds of kids in San Francisco that had never seen the Golden Gate Bridge, Ms. Little wondered what would happen if she could find a way to physically "bring experiences directly to youth." With this in mind, she bought an old airporter bus, refurbished it, filled it with art supplies, and drove it to neighborhoods where kids could be "transported" using art as their "vehicle."
Today, TIBP has focused its programming efforts, to serve incarcerated and post-incarcerated youth throughout the Bay Area, inside juvenile justice centers and youth probation camps in San Francisco County, San Mateo County, and Sonoma County.