ABOUT

Taste of Home is a community project to engage San Jose communities in printmaking activities to share food stories and memories. It will also bring attention to the lack of cultural diversity in food pantries and highlight food scarcity issues facing college students today. Participants will receive free art kits, learn how to make prints, and attend a cook-off event in 2021 and 2022. Thanks to partial funding by the California Arts Council and the City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs, we will be able to distribute art kits at selected elementary schools, public libraries, and San Jose State's art galleries. We hope that by sharing these unique stories, we can inspire change in future food donations.

Hands-on Workshops

The workshops will include presentations on art, food, and culture while highlighting local artists who will help to inspire the attendees. Artist Cynthia Cao will lead the hands-on styrofoam printmaking activity. She intentionally chose printmaking as a medium because it has a unique history in visual arts as a democratic art form. Styrofoam printing is suitable for all ages, and rest assured, the art kits include water-soluble inks so participants do not need to worry! Each participant will be able to create five prints from one drawing. We hope the workshops will encourage connection and conversation as participants learn, draw, and print with us.

The event will be recorded and made available online with a list of materials for anyone interested in learning how to make a print or for those that are unable to attend the workshops. Participants will return their best prints to us (via mail or email) to be included in the exhibition. Attendees are also welcomed to submit a recipe for a community cookbook to be published at the end of the year.

Multicultural Food Pantry Cook-Off Event

Art Exhibition

We want to celebrate food, culture, and empower participants to HAVE FUN despite limitations during this difficult time. We want to build community through shared stories, and the culminating exhibition allows us to showcase the creativity and hard work of all those involved. By changing narratives around food insecurity, we hope to expand access to food resources on SJSU campus and in the city of San Jose, and inspire change in future food donations to be more inclusive.

Students and community members will have the opportunity to connect to use art and design as tools of social change.

This program is supported in part by a grant from California Arts Council. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov

and the City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs.

The issue of food insecurity is a complex problem. At San Jose State, studies show that 1 in 5 students experience food insecurity. Of 5,000 students surveyed found:

• 21% sometimes/often didn’t eat for a full day

• 39% sometimes/often were hungry but didn’t eat because they didn’t have enough money

• 50% sometimes/often cut size of meals or skipped meals because they didn’t have enough money

This is why the Creative Ambassadorship project will run parallel to Community Table: Creative Approaches to Addressing Food Insecurity, a multidisciplinary project engaging SJSU students on creative solutions and resources to address food insecurity. It will bring together students from art, design, and nutrition through a series of artist workshops, lectures, and cooking events. Most of these events will be open to the public free of charge.

Using skills from the workshops, students will work with edible inks and paper made from food scraps to create resources like recipe cards. The printmaking and animation student clubs will create awareness posters about food insecurity. Students will incorporate submissions into a community cookbook that will be offered in food pantries. Approximately 15 students from Art Education will take the art lessons from Taste of Home, and bring it to their K-12 classes, expanding the impacted audience to an estimated 1,400 students.