Art Exhibition and Community Celebration was a complete success!

Official AC Transit Freedom Bus
featuring artwork by Berkeley High
AHA! students, Class of 2011

Thank you to everyone who came out on Friday night to make our event a success. Not only did the official AC Transit Freedom Bus make its debut, but we enjoyed amazing artwork and performances by local students.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was on hand, and enjoyed viewing the exhibited artwork and visiting with our student artists.

We honored all of our student artists with certificates of achievement, and presented the posters that will adorn more than 200 AC Transit buses as our Mobile Art Exhibit to our K-12 arts competition winners.

Alameda County Chief of Probation David Muhammed spoke about how proud he was that Butler Academic Center at the Juvenile Justice Center was selected to appear in the Mobile Art Exhibit. With three young men in attendance representing the 22 student artists who created the "Claudette Colvin" piece, which was also selected to appear on the Freedom Bus Project's poster, the Chief's words were even more powerful.

Mayor Quan and Superintendent and
Project Co-Chair Sheila Jordan

We also heard from Berkeley High School's Arts and Humanities Academy (AHA!) who contributed the artwork that appears on the official AC Transit Freedom Bus (see right), which is now in service. Durin gthe program Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (A.D. 14) presented AHA! with a certificate from the California State Assembly. AC Transit Interim General Manager Mary King provided an overview of how we took the artwork and transformed it into the bus wrap, the production and installation of which was generously donated by Titan Worldwide.

Head Royce Ninth Grader Rebecca Dharmapalan stunned the audience with her rendition of "A Change is Gonna Come." And Oakland School for the Arts theater students provided a heartwrenching reading of a scene from The Laramie Project, a play which depicts the town of Laramie, Wyoming following the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee's office presented a proclamation to the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, who participated in the Freedom Rides, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this spring. Activists Gay Plair Cobb, Steve McNichols, Wazir Peacock, and Jimmy Rogers were hand to accept the proclamation on behalf of their organization.

Kala Art Institute and the Marin Center for Independent Living provided featured exhibits. Kala provided civil rights-inspired prints created by Berkeley High School students. Marin CIL lent five panels of their Disability History Exhibit, the fifth of which includes a photo of Dria Fearn, our Executive Director, in a picture of the California Youth Leadership Forum for Students with Disabilities.

A big thank you to Oakland School for the Arts for hosting our celebration, and Waste Management for sponsoring our reception with Mayor Jean Quan and Assemblymember Sandre Swanson.