Celebrating local food systems benefits schoolwide wellness and strengthens community. On the shores of Lake Superior, in Michigan’s Rural Upper Peninsula, our growing season is very short. Over 400 miles north of Chicago, Houghton Elementary School’s art students were inspired by our food service director’s passion to facilitate a vibrant farm-to-school and summer meal program. Experiential learning through farmer visits led to students designing and creating a mural in our cafeteria.
Left: Mural detail; students painted their chosen food item on wooden circles. Right: Fourth-grade mural painting in progress.The local food systems triptych mural.Left: Keira, grade four, reflection on watermelon radish. Right: A fourth-grade student's drawing and reflection on the purple carrot.Bill, grade four, holds kale from local farmer Nichole (pictured).
Project Objectives
Food scarcity is real in our region. We set out to explore how art can address and strengthen relationships in local food systems to enhance empathy and equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our goals were to build community through exploring our local food systems while promoting schoolwide wellness.
We set out to bridge the gap between students and the farmers who grow their food. This project was the result of learning how to implement Culturally Responsive Sustainable Education (CRSE) in my art curriculum and school. When kids can put a face to the farmer and everyone else involved in our food systems, they become more mindful as they make food choices.
Farmer Visits
The unit started with experiential learning through tasting, smelling, touching, and observing fresh fruits and vegetables. Guest farmers visited our school and shared their produce and knowledge with students. By engaging all of the senses, students gained a greater appreciation and sense of empathy for farmers and food service workers. These experiences led to students designing and creating our local food systems mural.
The Mural
We asked our food service director what she thought should be included in the mural. She wanted to depict where the food comes from and how it serves us at school. We decided on the theme Eat the Rainbow as a visual representation of abundant and healthy food choices.
The final mural ended up being a triptych measuring 16 x 8' (5 x 2 m). We decided to use a plywood grid so we could work on it in the art room. Each fourth-grader became an expert on a particular fruit or vegetable and then painted their chosen food item on a circle of wood. We attached all the painted wood circles to the rainbow and to encourage a feeling of ownership by the entire school, each student added their fingerprint somewhere on the mural.
The Unveiling
Students learned a lot about the technical aspect of installing a large interactive mural. We met our deadline after several long days of installation and problem-solving. This was an invaluable and real-world learning experience for students about the complexities of creating and installing public art.
Our spring “arts and starts” celebration was held along with the unveiling of the mural for our community. Aspects of the mural are interactive and will be updated every year, along with the expansion of our farm-to-school program.
Conclusion
Students now have a deeper understanding of our local food systems and appreciate our amazing school meals because they understand where their food comes from. This mural project allowed students to amplify their voices on issues of food sustainability, build knowledge about farm-to-table practices and foster respect for all of the people involved in their nutritional well-being.
These powerful art experiences will help make students stewards of the land, supporting it for future generations.
Melissa Hronkin is an elementary art educator for the Houghton Portage School District in Houghton, Michigan. MHronkin@HPTS.us
National Standard
Connecting: Relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context.
Art teachers provide a variety of lessons for students to communicate their unique stories and ideas. Young students identify starting-place symbols in various texts before designing their own personalized letter designs; elementary students create a mural based on local food systems after learning about where their food comes from during farmer visits; middle-school students create nine-panel digital collages with symbols representing their likes and interests; and high-school students learn how cellphones and comic books can be powerful tools for visual communication.
