From the Field

Sowing Creativity at the San Jose Museum of Art

November 25, 2013

In honor of Thanksgiving we are spotlighting Sowing Creativity, a uniquely food-centric education program at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA). Sowing Creativity integrates art and science in a multi-disciplinary curriculum that teaches students about personal health and livable communities. SJMA’s museum educators and teaching artists collaborated with public school teachers and garden educators from four schools to develop the curriculum based on Around the Table: food, community and creativity, which celebrates and explores the role that food plays in our lives and in the culture of the Bay Area. The curriculum is comprised of project lessons as well as field trips to SJMA and Veggielution, a San Jose community farm.

Thanks to generous grant funding, four schools in the San Jose Unified School District will be receiving Sowing Creativity for free. The 360 third-grade public elementary school students and 12 teachers were not reached by SJMA’s previously existing education programs. The schools were selected in consultation with the Santa Clara County Office of Education, and are in under-served, low-income communities where many students have limited English-language skills and nutrition is often a concern.

SJMA is the largest provider of arts education in Santa Clara County.

More information on Sowing Creativity is available at the San Jose Museum of Art website. 

 

Image: Sowing Creativity students create a fruit quilt inspired by the artist collaborative Fallen Fruit. Image courtesy of the San Jose Museum of Art.