The Regional Transportation District (RTD) in partnership with the Aurora and Cherry Creek school districts unveiled the “I Heart My RTD” 40-foot RTD bus at two celebratory events at the winning students’ schools.
Nearly 2,400 middle school art students from the Aurora and Cherry Creek school districts submitted artwork on an interior bus card that represents what public transportation means and how it benefits the community for the “I Heart My RTD” student art contest pilot program. The contest theme was “My World. My Art. My RTD”. The aim of the contest was to encourage young people in the community to be aware of and engage with their public transit system through art.
After an online voting campaign, grand prize winners were chosen from each district. The two winning designs were: “Clean Environment with Clean Air” by Sydney C. at Fox Ridge Middle School in Cherry Creek school district and “You Never Know What’s In Space” by Jenna B. and Madison B. at Aurora Frontier P-8 in Aurora Public Schools.
The winning students were given the opportunity to witness their artwork come alive after working behind-the-scenes with an RTD graphic designer to turn their artwork into a large-scale printable design wrapping a 40-foot bus.
Students, parents, teachers and community members gathered at Aurora Frontier P-8 and Fox Ridge Middle School to see the artwork-wrapped buses for the first time. Each school celebration featured a presentation for the winners as well as the entire school seeing the bus unveiled for the first time.
“I am so proud of all of these fabulous young artists that participated in this contest,” said Thad McCauley, art teacher at Aurora Frontier P-8. “This contest just shows that if you work hard and come up with creative things and stick with it, big things can happen.”
“RTD is elated to partner with these schools on this pilot program,” said RTD Board Director Claudia Folska. “When we envisioned this, we saw it as a chance to educate kids about public transit. With all of the expansion of transit that we will be seeing in the metro area in the next few years, it’s important to understand how safety and transit come together and play a role in all of our everyday lives.”
“This has been such a cool experience—thank you all for voting for us,” said Jenna B, grand prize winner. “We came up with our design because we thought about all of the places RTD can take you. That’s why we included things like pizza and music. It was great getting to work with my best friend on such a fun project.”
The winning students will be honored next week at the RTD Board meeting on Dec. 16 where the bus will be parked on the street for the full RTD Board to see. The wrapped bus will be used in service throughout the RTD system. In addition, all interior bus card entries will be displayed on the insides of RTD’s fleet.
