So our adventure begins!

First off I would like to say that this Blog will allow you to follow the entire Portside ArtsMobile adventure..from start to finish! Our journey began this past March when Director Kim Creighton and I (Jenna Wilchinsky) were trying to brainstorm a way to make our current mobile arts program more "mobile".  Throughout the 2012-2013 school year Portside Arts Center held after school visual art programs in 6 of our local elementary and middle schools impacting 120 children. These programs were very successful and the parents, students and schools evaluated it with the highest acclaim! This program only cost the children less then 1 dollar a class, $20 in total for the whole 20 class program because we received two grants one from PA Sate Rep John Taylor through Impact Services and one from the Connelly Foundation. Each child received 30 hours of arts education and if a child could not afford the $20 we gave them a scholarship. At the end of each program Portside would hold an art exhibition which displayed all of the children's hard work for their friends, piers and families to see. The looks on the participants faces were unforgettable as they walked through the showing pointing and yelling with joy "look, look, thats my art!!" At every school showing we arranged for all of the school's staff and student's to walk through the exhibition. This made the children in our arts program feel so proud and confident. The children saw what they achieved and best of all they got to feel that wonderful satisfying feeling of accomplishment. So back to Kim and I's "March brain storming session"....as we were talking about how our teachers struggle with transporting and storing all of the programs art materials and finished projects the idea came to us!! "What about converting a bus into a self contained mobile arts center??!!" This was a great idea! Not only will the bus be self sufficient but we realized we could impact a lot more children and school's. After working out all of the details we came to the conclusion that with this bus Portside could deliver 30 hours of arts education to over 1,000 children & teens a year! And thats only with one bus....imagine having a fleet of buses...OMG!!! So our first major task, GET A BUS. We searched and searched and finally a wonderful company agreed to donate one of their retired buses to Portside. YAY! So task one, check...task two, raising money for the renovations and three years of operating expenses. Now we are very busy writing grants, organizing a spectacular fundraiser and making a video to launch our very first ArtsMobile Kick Starter campaign. So that's it for now folks and stay tuned! 

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