The Food Museum: A Wild Choice. Food art for secondary vocational education
How do we feed the world now and in the future in a way that gives back to the earth as much as it takes? The Food Museum addresses this question with a pop-up exhibition about the versatility of our food system. Artists, food producers, chefs, scientists and students come together to think, research, eat, taste and discuss the potential of designing our food system for positive change. Part on the project revolves around co-creation with secondary vocational students.
Regional
Netherlands
The project has been active in the province Flevoland in the Netherlands for the past two years. In this region the educational program has been developed and tested and will run for a full year also in 2023. From 2024 onward the educational program for secondary vocational students will be rolled out on a national level.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Stichting 'n Wilde Keuze (EN: Foundation A Wild Choice) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Robin Last name of representative: Vroom Gender: Female Nationality: Netherlands Function: Director and Founder Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Muiderzandplaats 1 Town: Almere Postal code: 1361 AK Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 44299975 E-mail:robin_vroom@hotmail.com Website:https://www.wildekeuze.nl/
The Food Museum is an educational art project with a focus on food; a subject that is connected to nature, farming communities, economy and politics, with customs and culture, with our history and possible future. The Food Museum shows that the values we assign to our food have a direct influence on our environment, health and wellbeing. By depicting these values people gain a better grip on the developments taking place in the world around us. The Food Museum creates holistic, interactive and beautiful experiences with the aim to reach a wide audience for whom the discussions about climate, biodiversity, health and well-being are often inaccessible. By focusing on food, the most accessible and tangible daily act of our existence, the Food Museum, together with its audience, looks for new ways to study and reshape the complex global challenges of our time.
The Food Museum consists of an interactive pop-up exhibition that shows how the food on our plates impacts our whole living environment. Next to the various theatrical workshops that are organized together with artists, chefs and food producers, the Food Museum has a strong focus on education. Her Food Art education project for secondary vocational students offers a cross-curricular program where students gain insight on how food can change the world. They develop 21st century skills by designing and building, based on their interests, their own food exhibition. In collaboration with the school, this project integrates sustainability into their curriculum and takes the first steps towards more local facilities around culture, nature and science in vocational training the Netherlands.
This Food Art program was developed with 25 third year students (16 to 18 years old) at Aeres MBO Almere in 2022. In 2023 this education program is extended, running from March until July, 42 first year students will take part in the course consisting of nine full-day classes and four building days.
Art as a foundation for change
Interdisciplinary
Co-creation
Food education
Community building
The connection between nature and culture can be found on our plate. The (food)landscape is where everything comes together: flora and fauna, urban, rural, economics and politics, historical and social aspects. The rural landscape, the city park, the supermarket, our own kitchen, the recreation area and new nature areas all reflect specific ways in which we deal with flora and fauna, with wilderness and order, with land and water. However, in our Western culture there is little attention for the versatility of nature and culture and both are often seen as separate units that must be maintained by separate institutions.
With the Food Art vocational education program, the focus of this application, students are stimulated to develop new visions of nature, agriculture and culture. The students of Aeres MBO Almere are guided to use their imagination and implement creative thinking to address the potential of sustainable futures. The secondary vocational students learn to question the world around them with and through art, and to convert these questions into art installations that are accessible and inspirational to a wide audience. During nine sessions based on five learning phases, the students work towards designing their own food exhibition. Based on existing, positive local solutions and stories, experts from the field come to help guide the students in their design process. From farmers, food producers and local chefs to designers, illustrators and artists.
As a result: The students are able to describe and assess the impact that the production, transport and consumption of food has on our living environment. Based on their own interests and awareness about food, the students show how they can tangibly influence the possibilities of positive change. The students learn how to translate the subject matter they are taught at school into physical, inspiring and beautiful designs that appeal to the imagination and communicate with a wide audience.
The Food Museum makes it possible to connect complex global challenges to our every day lives and local living spaces. In a playful way it shows both the students and their audience how they can be part of the changing world around them.
Using art as a foundation for change. Through art and imagination, the sustainable, healthy and inclusive initiatives that already exist are made visible. Under the guidance of artists and designers, we create space for not knowing, beauty, and confusion. Various art forms are introduced from this space, such as design, theater, dance, visual design, cooking, illustration, and storytelling.
Within this process, the starting point is the interests and needs of the students, which food themes they consider important to communicate to a wide audience. The aim of the lessons is then to translate the chosen themes into playful, accessible, and physical stories and designs. How does the story we are trying to tell come to life, how can you translate that story into a design, a form that a wide audience can relate to personally? It is not the intention that the students find the perfect solution for a specific food issue. Based on the food themes, we look for the underlying values that are attributed to our food. The focus is not on what goes wrong, but we build on the confidence that there is enough. Changes in society are often accompanied by feelings of loss. The loss of a role or a way of life. In this project we train our radical imagination to look for the meaning of change. By stimulating the imagination, they discover not only that another world is not only possible, but that its principles already exist. If only we know how and where to look. These design topics are always linked to our personal lives, for example, in every class the students prepare lunch for each other. The lunch ingredients are always connected to the topics they discus, such as, food waste, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, water and social equality.
Diversity is a common thread in both the natural production of food and the cultural influence on our food cultures. Diversity and inclusion are part of our food. An exchange of these stories, the meals, and the flavors that go with them have great connecting power. This connecting force is central to both the interpretation and implementation of the educational project.
It was a conscious choice to develop this educational project for secondary vocational students. The attention for nature and art education in secondary vocational education (mbo), in contrast to the attention senior general secondary (HAVO) and pre-university (VWO) education receives, is limited in the Netherlands. For vocational education there are no government obligations and there are no earmarked budgets. There are therefore major differences per institution and region in how and/or whether arts and nature education is given a role within the curriculum. While receiving the least attention and financial funding, vocational students are the engine for major social challenges such as healthcare, agriculture, housing and the energy transition. Vocational students that go into the world with the right tools and skills to address these complex challenges will be crucial for the execution of all parts related to the Green New Deal. The focus on this group by 'n Wilde Keuze aims to decrease the current inequalities of opportunity in the Dutch education system and to strengthen the imagination and 21st century skills of the people who are vital for a healthy, green and resilient society.
Additional social value is that the students leave school, visit sites in our food system and get to work in a creative space at the local theater company Vis à Vis in Almere Poort. The boundaries of the school are stretched. The school becomes part of society. The students experience that what they learn matters, they experience an intrinsic motivation that transcends whether or not they get a good grade.
The educational project is centered around co-creation with students, farmers, food producers, teachers and creatives. In 2022 and 2023 in total 87 secondary vocational students will have participated in the education program as part of their normal school curriculum. The intensity of the project meant that the students really work on a transition in their thinking about food. Such a transition takes time and has to descend slowly in order to actually change actions. For example, in 2022 there was a group of boys who immediately indicated during the first conversation that red meat was healthier than vegetables. Several informal conversations followed during the course of the program about both the positive and negative impact of meat in our food system. The impact on this group became clear when these boys indicated that they wanted to develop a prototype about the sustainable and local production of tropical fruit and vegetables. During a visit to Onze Volkstuinen, a local community garden in a greenhouse, one of these students said: "Ah, I don't really like plants, but this is actually really cool." This group eventually developed a “Recipe wall”, a snack machine filled with recipes from different food cultures in Almere to encourage the average resident to discover more vegetable recipes. Each recipe card also stated where in Almere the ingredients could be obtained. Especially encouraging people to visit local shops and sustainable city farms for their groceries and to get acquainted with different food cultures in city.
With this approach the students learn to think creatively, design, present and become acquainted with different worlds. We also saw that the students became proud when they started to get a grip on the design process (the most difficult part). Where in the beginning they would ask at what time the class day would end, the students now had to be told to stop working and all parents, friends and classmates were invited to the presentation.
During the first iteration of the Food Art program in 2022, the main collaborating partner of the project was the school Aeres MBO Almere. This large institution has schools all over the Netherlands. The school leadership was open to the concept of the Food Art project and has given 'n Wilde Keuze the freedom to teach the students during an entire semester as part of their normal curriculum. Based on a positive reflection of our cooperation in 2022, the school has decided to provide 'n Wilde Keuze with three classes divided over two semesters in 2023. The food-art project will therefor run from March until Juli and will have 42 participating students. For each semester the school has also offered the support of one or two of their teachers who would have originally taught them that semester. Together with the vocational teachers and the artists and designers from all over the Netherlands, we create the program as to best cater to the needs and personal lives of the participating students. Also local farmers, innovative entrepreneurs and food experts are involved for the implementation. Next to the educational stakeholders, there are three national institutions that provide the funding for these first two years of the project. The largest funders are the Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie (Fund for cultural participation), Fonds21 (Fund21 for art and community education) and Cultuurfonds Almere (Culture Fund Almere, dividing funds in name of the municipality). These funders were looking for innovative projects that integrate art and design education into the curriculum of secondary vocational students. The results of the designs made in 2022 have also been well received by the municipality of Almere and it is currently assessed whether these works can be further developed and given a permanent place in public spaces. Stakeholders from the municipality and province are being involved to discuss funding opportunities to replicate this program in other schools and regions.
With Food Art education, the Food Museum, uses co-creation for the realization of the project and brings people and sectors together that do not naturally work together. The educational project has been designed by the founder of 'n Wilde Keuze, Robin Vroom (28 years old). Her interest in how art and culture energize economic, social, and political systems, and vice versa, started 10 years ago. Robin Vroom visited a theater performance on a farm outside Rotterdam with a group of children from the inner city. The children were welcomed in the stables where the cows were kept. It smelled different and there was manure everywhere. The children were shocked to learn that their milk came from these cows and not from sterile machines. This was beyond their knowledge and imagination. The amazement at this fierce reaction grew into the ambition to anchor sustainable developments and natural ecosystems in our imagination.
The Food Museum is the result of a quest that has occupied Robin for a long time: how can we bridge the world of science, art and innovation in a way that related to a wider audience.
During the first two sessions the students are introduced to the world of art and food systems with a visit to the Food Museum and its makers and visit several food places. The students follow the route from farm to fork. In 2022 they were introduced to a regenerative farmer, a local Moroccan-Dutch chef cooking out of his own food forest, two local food entrepreneurs and a director of a food culture and equality business. Next to the site visits and input from people working in the food sector; four designers and four technical builders came to the class to assist the students with conceptualizing and executing their food installations. By working across different disciplines, the students became acquainted with different worlds outside of their school system and gained skills in creative thinking, resilience building, problem framing, design processes and presenting.
The art of food has been a recurring source of inspiration for artists through the ages. The relationship to food in these works of art can tell us a lot about the societies of those times. The current range can be seen in museum and temporary exhibitions such as We Are Food in the Jan Cunen museum or Antwerpen à la carte. In relation to these projects, 'n Wilde Keuze wants to take design out of the physical museum walls. The Food Museum does not consist of individual masterpieces made by individual designers and artists. The concept of the Food Museum creates different stories about eating people and acts as a “soft space” where people physically come together. Together around the dining table, literally and figuratively, an approach that can also stimulate new connections, collaborations and social cohesion outside the project. With the artists, designers and students involved, ’n Wilde Keuze looks outside the boundaries of the established art world for a meaningful role for culture in times of transition. The end result is physical work with a critical intervention or social exchange. In addition to the museums, many organizations and political bodies are also engaged in making food issues a subject of public discussion. People are becoming more aware of the impact our food has on the climate, environment, our health and the working conditions of farmers around the world. However, when you are in the supermarket the solutions often feel far away and elusive. Young people in particular become frustrated with the complexity and endless choices. Still the real life implications of the political and academic discussions on topics as nitrogen and biodiversity, the European Green New Deal and water pollution are not accessible to a wide audience. The Food Museum focuses on local & regional co-creation, inspired by the environment and with civil society as an active part. Resulting in living interventions that connect to peoples everyday lives, needs and experiences.
The Food Art vocational project is transferable in both content, audience, location and scope. It is possible to scale up the implementation of the project to different student levels and ages as well as different secondary vocational schools in all other areas of the Netherlands (and even abroad). Simultaneously, 'n Wilde Keuze has been focusing on food- and agriculture, but this educational methodology can also be applied to different societal challenges, such as housing, healthcare, fashion, industry and energy transition.
'n Wilde Keuze will remain her focus on how food can save the world for at least another four years as the foundation first aims to replicate its activities to more areas in the Netherlands. In 2024, the Foundation will launch a new concept of a traveling food museum. As a traveling group, a route is drawn through the Netherlands that connects the existing initiatives, organizations and creative thinkers that are working on innovative and positive solutions. At every location where the Food Museum settles, an inspiring program is developed with location-specific themes, in collaboration with makers, (food) producers, chefs, experts and secondary vocational students from the region. The target group is both the players from the food and culture field and the residents in the surrounding region.
In every region, the students will play an important role in shaping new solutions and designing physical installations inspired by the relevant food themes in the region. With the intention to integrate art-food education into the curriculum of all secondary vocational students, this program offers a cross-curricular offer in which the students investigate what food means to us/them. In addition, this approach creates a buffet of examples and opportunities for internships and work experience in the nature and food sector.
During nine full-day lessons and on the basis of five learning phases, the students work towards designing and developing their own food exhibition that is presented at a central location. 1)Introduction. On the first day, the students are introduced to the Food Museum and they participate in two creative workshops. Throughout these workshops and informal conversations about food with each other, a deepening takes place, the students gain insight into the natural, political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of our food landscape. The day is finishes with a guided brainstorming session to discover and select topics of interests. These themes will be the focus of the next lessons. 2)Theatrical encounter and exploration. Exploration and meeting with experts who work within the chosen themes. The students visit locations in the region. Based on these conversations, the students will be able to further focus the premise for their installation and present it to each other. 3)Design. The use of different design forms is supervised by design and construction company Collectief Soepel and artists from the team of 'n Wilde Keuze. How do you translate the story you want to tell into a physical interactive (design) form? Based on several brainstorming sessions, the students are guided to first think big and ambitious and then to develop the best ideas in an increasingly specific and realistic way. External artists and experts are invited to help the students further in content and form. 4. Construction. Under the supervision of construction company The Creative Builders, the students will further develop and build their designs in the workshop of Vis à Vis. 5)Presentation day. The students are in charge of designing their exhibition space, in an empty store-building in the city center. During the opening, they are the hosts and presenters of their work. They welcome their teachers, classmates, friends, parents, people from civil society and the government.
With this education project, the students look for local and real life solutions to complex global challenges. In 2022 during the first conversations at the start of the project, it became clear how disillusioned the students are about the state of the world and their future. Robin Vroom always makes sure to start with an honest and informal discussion about what food means to them, how they think food influences the world around us and how they feel about the global challenges we face. While it takes a little warming up, with every new group Robin is surprised with how aware the students are about certain food topics. However, they always indicate that they do not feel they have any control over them. This initiative works to enable the students to gain a sense of belonging and give them the tools and inspiration on how they can embody and act on sustainability. The topics we address are different in every program but cover topics such as food waste, protein transition, local food chains & farm to fork initiatives, food culture and inclusion, regenerative agriculture, soil life, water quality, food as medicine / health, political history of agriculture, potential of seeds for resilience and biodiversity in forests, cities and farms. The initiative has impact on the transition by working in change networks, we address the connection of food with globalcomplex challenges but then continue to work with existing and local examples of solutions and positive change. Next to the impact this has on the future work paths and sense of ownership for the students, this approach also shows a wider audience that a green, social and creative society is possible. With every activity the Food Museum builds a platform for the innovative people, solutions and initiatives that work to create a better world. Everyone is invited around the diner table, literally and figuratively, an approach that also stimulates new connections, collaborations and social cohesion outside of the project.
The education project has run one full implementation cycle and is currently preparing for an extended second round in 2023. In 2022 the collaboration with Aeres MBO Almere was initiated and funding for the first two years of the project acquired. From May until Juli the first 25 students were welcomed at the Food Museum every Friday from 9:30am until 16:00pm. The first implementation cycle functioned as a pilot to test the envisioned methodology. In total five farmers, food experts and food culture joined the project to assist the students with their chosen topics. An additional five designers and artists joined the class during the design phase and three technical builders helped the students to build their prototype. The end result in 2022 were three prototypes designed and build by the students. The three prototypes told interesting and pressing stories about our relationship to food and as such it was decided that the prototypes would become additions to the official Food Museum and has been visited by 3400 people. The art education program in 2022 has been well received by 'n Wilde Keuze, the students and the school. It has been decided to continue the lessons in 2023 with a larger group of students over a longer period. The students develop impressive installations that deserve a larger audience in their own right. In 2023 the same structure is implemented but over twice the time period, from March until Juli. 'N Wilde Keuze has been given a storefront in the city center of Almere to transform into an exhibition space. From Juli 10 until 13, the students are given extra time off their normal curriculum to assist in the construction of the exhibition. The official opening will take place on the 13th of July. While the exhibition is open to the public, there will be several events organized by ’n Wilde Keuze that invite the civil public to interact with the topics address by students with lectures, cooking sessions, creative workshops and performances.
As mentioned in one of the previous questions, our education program has been designed as to develop the skills, values and hope needed to take action and respond to our planetary crisis. The project creates a playful environment in which we embrace the complexities of sustainability. By using design and imagination we envision sustainable futures and connect them to practical ways on how to act. The choice to focus on a long term collaboration with Aeres MBO Almere, follows the intention to not only provide students with opportunities and climate tools but to also show the potential of integrating design, sustainable development and green transitions into the curriculum for all students. The global challenges of the 21st century ask for a holistic focus that transcends existing sectors. With our education approach, ’n Wilde Keuze shows how this methodology benefits all students regardless of their study focus, age or background. Every class the teachers of Aeres MBO Almere are asked to join the sessions in order to support educators in their knowledge and skills in how to teach about the climate crisis and sustainability, including dealing with the eco-anxiety of their students.
Our program is hands-on, interdisciplinary and relevant to local contexts, the students become acquainted with different worlds outside of their school system and gain skills in creative thinking, resilience building, problem framing, design processes, construction, presenting. The results of the student designs are then presented to civil society and to local government and organizations. Based on our first implementation year, the feedback from the local authorities has been extremely positive and we are currently discussing how they can be more involved in the future. To expand the positive impact of this project we intent to continue to map and analyze our approach to learning for sustainability and to share our finding with more educational institutions and teachers.
