Youth Change Public Perception of Bus Bench Ads
By Veronica Foster, Communications + Advocacy Manager
2 min read Teachers using the Design Your Neighborhood curriculum asked middle school art students to design artwork for public transit that embodies the identity of a place they would like to represent. Each class then voted on winning designs that were installed on bus benches around Nashville.
Public Transit Should Embody the Community it Serves
Bus bench art installation along Nolensville Pike near the Fairgrounds
One important element of our Design Your Neighborhood program is empowering youth to recognize that their perspectives are not only unique, but also deserve to be showcased publicly. This was our second Spring implementing a partnership with WeGo to showcase Neighborhood Identity artwork on bus stop benches near students’ schools. Whether you are a regular bus rider or not, you have probably seen the nature of typical bus stop bench advertising. The content typically depicts injury lawyers or other predatory companies that target low-income neighbors.
Our goal with this STEAM Art curriculum was to not only get middle school students excited about taking public transit, but showcase positive local neighborhood identity representation in place of predatory advertising. The students were given the opportunity to demonstrate what “local identity” means to them. Some chose to focus on their very specific memories of their neighborhood, while others focused on more historic elements, like landmark buildings. Sometimes rather than zeroing on a neighborhood, the youth chose to represent Nashville as a whole.
Bus bench installation on Lebanon Pike and Spence Lane
Bus bench installation at Nolensville Pike and Old Hickory Blvd
The bus bench art was up for just one month, but our goal for future iterations of the project would be to keep the intervention up on bus benches throughout the whole Summer. The artwork was on major bus lines as close to the schools who created the artwork as they could be!
Get in touch with us if you are interested in sponsoring more youth-led bus bench art or consider hosting more positive advertising on bus benches to support our public transit system.
Check out some of the students’ art and their artist statements below!
Free Girl: It's about a girl who loves to adventure to the mountains and see her home as a skyline which is Nashville, Tennessee.
The neighborhood I portrayed is from when I was growing up and used to play games in an alleyway. Sometimes vegetation would grow there and me and my friends would watch the progress of may weeds or dandelions. This artwork would benefit my neighborhood since it draws towards the more simplistic aspect of life that brings joy. It also brings meaning and more character to everyday things like vegetation and small hangout areas that are “reserved” for our childhood hangout spot.
What is on our art is Lockeland Springs in bold letters and then inside them traits to represent Lockeland Springs. We have also put things that have been in Lockeland Springs for decades. Lastly we put a multi-colored background to fill it in. This benefits the community because it shows you how Lockeland Springs started. It shows that it has a lot of history like how Nashville transportation wasn't always a bus transit and it evolved from using streetcars as transportation.
Our artwork shows a lot about Nashville and Tennessee itself, it indicates the Nashville skyline and shows Nashville at dusk with a guitar and titans symbol which represents Tennessee and its pride.
We chose this also for the public art part because of how much more public art was created there as Lockeland gentrified. The design is trying to show the old and new aspects of Lockeland Springs. We are trying to direct it to newcomers to teach them about the history of the neighborhood. Our art benefits the neighborhood by showing people a little bit of the history of Lockeland springs. It also shows people about the different areas of Lockeland springs like the school.