Young Ocean Tides potters help fight hunger
3/21/12 – Narragansett, RI — Ocean Tides School is excited to announce that it will be hosting an Empty Bowls Event at its Narragansett Campus on Thursday, May 10, 2012
Empty Bowls is an international grassroots effort to fight hunger that has been in existence for almost 20 years. The basic premise is simple: Potters and craftspeople, educators, students, and community members work together to create handcrafted bowls. Guests are invited to a simple meal of soup and bread. In exchange for a cash donation, guests are asked to keep a bowl as a reminder of all the empty bowls in the world. The money raised is donated to an organization working to end hunger and food insecurity.
With the help of a grant from Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, our school will host the event, our students and staff will make bowls out of clay and wood and three local High schools will be joining our efforts with bowl donations. The contributions of 2 community pottery studios and donations from a number of professional potters will help us achieve our goal of having 300 handmade bowls available for sale at the event.
As a cross-curricular effort within the school our hopes are to raise awareness of the hunger issues in our state, provide an opportunity for our students to give back and offer an artistic and creative experience for all those who participate. Our Culinary program will provide the soup and bread and our students will act as servers and assistants at the event. All of the proceeds will go the Rhode Island Community Food Bank which distributes food to the various sites throughout the state.
“There’s a story about a man who left this earth and was taken on a tour of the inner realms. He was shown a room where he saw a large group of hungry people trying to eat dinner, but because the spoons that they were trying to eat with were longer than their arms, they remained frustrated. “That’s terrible!” exclaimed the man (…) and on they went. “…The man was perplexed to see what looked very much like the same scene: there was a group of people with spoons longer than their arms. As he looked more closely, however, he saw happy faces and full tummies, for there was one important difference: the people here had learned to feed each other.” – ( Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by Alan Cohen)
–Nancy Lyon– Art Teacher and Empty Bowls Coordinator