It’s a hot summer day and brightly dressed Brook Beatty stands on South Broad Street in downtown Trenton.
After staring for a few moments at the growing line of clients waiting in the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen’s mobile food line in front of the First Methodist Church, she starts yelling.
“Hey! You want to take a tour?” She then points to the bus behind her.
The clients give bewildered looks and start to think. Perhaps, like others, they’ll follow up on the artist’s invitation and wander over to see what’s happening — and try their hand at a bit of art-making.
But perhaps, just like others, they won’t. But it doesn’t matter because it’s the opportunity that counts.
And so it goes with the Trenton Community A-Team’s new Art Cart.
The newly converted bookmobile is making the rounds in designated neighborhoods, bringing art directly to people where they are and advancing a project that has been connecting marginalized regional communities through art-making for more than 25 years.
The Trenton Community A-Team — or just TCAT — is a nonprofit organization that supports, develops and promotes self-taught — or untrained — artists in underserved areas of Trenton and surrounding communities.
Founded in 2014, TCAT continues the goals of the original yet unincorporated A-Team efforts launched in 2000 by five artists at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) by offering art-making sessions in its Studio 51.
That’s a converted carriage house located in Trenton’s Creek to Canal Arts District in what is known as Trenton’s old city area.
TCAT also partners with the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and interacts with other formal or informal groups, including the ANEW group at HomeFront in Lawrence.
Meanwhile, the new self-contained mobile art studio and gallery accompanies TASK’s mobile meal truck services throughout the city.
The former bookmobile, with a wheelchair lift, originally had been used by the City of New Bedford Library in Massachusetts until 2025.
Built by Thomas Built Bus in North Carolina in 2007, it was purchased by TCAT for $34,030. An additional $26,204 was allocated to JM Custom Coach Builders in Hamilton to convert the interior to art studio spaces, install a retractable awning and address exterior livery and wrapping.
TCAT artists painted the interior and staff the bus as it accompanies the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen’s mobile division during its weekly Trenton neighborhood stops.
The Art Cart’s regular Trenton schedule includes stops from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. on the first Monday of each month at First Baptist Church, 128 Centre St.; from 2:15 to 3:15 p.m. on the second Tuesday at Bible Way Cathedral of Deliverance, 333 Home Ave.; from 2 to 3 p.m. on the third Wednesday at Turning Point United Methodist Church, 15 S. Broad St.; and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the fourth Thursday in the Nexus parking lot, 431 Greenwood Ave.
The Art Cart will also be featured at Artworks Trenton’s Art All Day event on Saturday, Sept. 19. On Sunday, Sept. 20, it will visit Bordentown as part of the Old City Hall Restoration Committee’s Sunday Soiree series. The program will spotlight the Trenton Community A-Team’s artistic outreach and include readings by A-Team poets from their publication, “Fresh Type & Novel Visions.”
Plans are also being discussed to take the Art Cart to additional locations throughout the region, including Princeton, Hopewell and Hamilton.
The mobile art project was made possible through a recent $408,717 grant from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s $15 million Phase II of the Activation, Revitalization and Transformation, or A.R.T., program.
Coordinated in cooperation with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the program was designed to stimulate community placemaking efforts by leveraging New Jersey’s arts and cultural sector as a creative force for change and by supporting nonprofit organizations focused on public art installations and arts-based initiatives.
The first phase of the initiative was piloted in 2023 in Newark and Atlantic City. The program was expanded to include 31 New Jersey municipalities, including Trenton.
In addition to supporting the operation of the Art Cart, A.R.T. provided TCAT with funds to strengthen and promote Trenton culture through the creation of a suite of mural paintings near the Trenton Transit Center and a guide to Trenton cultural attractions.
Yet it is the Art Cart that provides the main community connection.
Using the original A-Team approach that offered only availability, the Art Cart offers no classes or programs, just an invitation to enter, create and interact with one of the A-Team artists.
The results are beyond art therapy.
Just ask the Princeton-based social psychologist who — despite her insistence on not being named — is known for volunteering at the soup kitchen since the 1980s. She is a witness to the creation of the A-Team.
During a recent discussion, she corrects a misconception that many people have about people from lower economic and challenged backgrounds making art: “Therapy is a different need. Creating art in any form is self-expression. How frustrating if it is blocked and one can’t express it.
“When people create art, they go into a state that provides them with the opportunity to explore thoughts and feelings. The art comes from the artists. Human beings are being themselves. (And) the art connects one person to other people. It provides identity and social connection. And artists do not get into trouble when they do their art.”
She is not alone in her thinking.
As TCAT organizers note, “Art has long been recognized as a catalyst for community cohesion and resilience.” And “a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts found that adults who attended arts events and/or created art within the previous month were more likely to participate in social opportunities, building relationships at a grass roots level.”
That this is a universal need — rather than one connected only to a population that lacks available resources or encouragement — is reflected in a TCAT statement: “Our programs are open to all and we continue to nurture creativity and work skills for budding artists.”
“Because of our location and partnership with TASK, our primary audience is nearly 100 percent African Americans below the poverty level.”
In fact, as TCAT materials note, the founding A-Team artists “were beneficiaries of the services of TASK, were neighborhood residents of color with limited financial means. Some lived with disabilities, and one was a formerly incarcerated individual.”
But don’t take their word for it.
“I founded the A-Team with my sister Rose, who died, and (fellow artist) Frankie Mack,” says Herman “Shorty” Rose, 72.
“When I got out of prison, my sister invited me to the soup kitchen,” he says when interviewed about the founding of the group. “When I hit the street and saw all the colors, it started — my mind was creating something every day. When I got myself down to the soup kitchen I made my things out of everything I could find.”
With a sense of art and a need for community, Rose, his sister and a few others found themselves organizing with people who were taking an art class offered at the kitchen and turning it into a community with an identity.
“We came up different names (for the group). We wrote the names down and put them in a bag. Whatever name came out would be the name. And it was the A-Team. We weren’t trying to take the name from the TV show.”
The result was that artists met once a week for about five hours in the multipurpose room at TASK and worked on projects of their choice. To join, an artist must be active with the group, produce a piece of artwork, share artwork and, when possible, attend a monthly A-Team business meeting.
Reflecting on what he saw, Rose says, “If it wasn’t for the A-Team a lot of people would have nothing to do, just come in and eat. When we put the pictures on the walls, it makes the people feel good. It makes them feel like they’re at an art gallery. People love it. People can’t afford pictures, but they see them. They may see them in their dreams.
“It also makes people who pass through the door look in (at the A-Team artists). They see we’re open to the public and don’t turn anyone away. I say, ‘Don’t just look, but come on in and show what you can do. Bring your talents here. Let people see your work.’”
That’s the same approach that Art Cart artists like Beatty are using on the streets.
Rose’s reasons for helping to create the project are both personal and social.
“Art is keeping me out of the jail. It’s keeping me off the street and out of trouble. I had to change my ways. You’ve got to have something to fall back on. Trenton is not the way it’s supposed to be. I was born and raised Trenton — South Trenton on Lamberton Street. I’ve seen Trenton flip a million times. We’ve got nothing here anymore. There’s nothing for the kids to go to anymore. They’re talking about the kids getting in trouble — so make something.”
And that is just what TCAT artists are doing.
As TCAT board president John Kelly writes, “Our efforts have gained recognition in promoting Trenton as the region’s most noted group of ‘outsider artists,’ or individuals with no formal artistic training who create artworks expressing an entirely unique style and vision.
“Many of our participants have developed the quality of their art to a level in which they are nearing self-supporting careers by promoting and selling their art. We help them market and sell their art by establishing connections to local galleries and press. We also help the artists build specific social skills for the art world, such as how to represent oneself professionally in formal and informal interactions with people of all social classes.”
Kelly says that since its inception, hundreds of A-Team artists have shown artworks in hundreds of exhibitions at locations well beyond Trenton. Venues include the Trenton City Museum, New Jersey State Museum, Artworks, Grounds For Sculpture, Princeton Historical Society’s Updike Farm and private galleries, such as the former Outsider Art Gallery in Milford, New Jersey.
And while the new Art Cart bus is up and running, it isn’t the end of the road for the organization.
In addition to the other A.R.T.-funded projects — the mural project and paint sessions near the Trenton Transit Center, a downtown Trenton art map and cooperative ventures with other downtown organizations — TCAT is looking to secure its future, one beyond the single-year A.R.T. project funding and, thanks to government cutbacks, a shrinking pool of arts funding.
As Kelly says, “Nonprofits, no matter how large or small they may be, struggle to be funded and to be visible. Arts organizations are especially challenged to get support amidst the clamor of the nonprofit community.”
The CPA and past TASK board member says TCAT is specifically looking for funds to help address rent, insurance, art supplies and costs related to art and artist promotion.
There is also the reality of supporting the two-member staff, who, in addition to having TASK employment history, are also artists: full-time director and filmmaker Anthony Catanese and part-time program manager and independent rock musician and songwriter Jaime Parker.
Kelly says the goal is to “make Trenton a more vibrant home of the arts. We need Board members, and we are actively seeking out those who can and are interested in helping us. (And) we are open to new artists joining our collaborative group.”
Yet Rose hits the real reason to keep the program and bus on the road: “When I come down here, I don’t think about the street. I think about one place. Being here and doing things for the A-Team.”
But for now, to get on board, visit the Trenton Community A-Team at tcateam.org.
