There is a unique Hastings High School event happening April 15th.
High school students Mara Teter and Kate Nowak connected with KDWA in the ceramics room. In the room you’ll see shelves of clay cups, bowls, and vases ready for the kiln. Students were at the throwing wheel working clay. Nowak offers details about the Empty Bowl event.
“So, it’s this huge community event where all the ceramic students get together, and we make bowls, and then people from the community will come in, and for $15 as an entry, they get a warm meal and a handmade bowl, and all the proceeds will go to Hastings Family Service.”
A percentage of the proceeds will help in a global initiative to fight hunger. Teter explains.
“Also, there’s an informational program about what Hastings Family Service does and where we’re donating the money to; 30% of the proceeds also go to Heifer International, which helps with continual food security. They will give an animal, like a cow or a goat, to a family and then teach them how to take care of it and how to, like, get continued food. So that way, it’s not just providing food for one day; it’s continually for that community. They get food for a longer amount of time now.”
Nowak shares about her time in class and her connection to the Empty Bowls event.
“I actually just joined this year because I didn’t have any time in my schedule, but I’m so grateful to start it now, and I’m having so much fun. It’s such a great break in my day. I’m lucky enough to have family members who had been in the ceramics program for years, so I’ve been going to empty bowls for years, and it’s so cool to be a part of it now.”
KDWA also connected with Bert Casperson, art teacher at Hastings High School. Casperson offers the timeline of the Empty Bowl event.
“A week from this Wednesday, April 15, from 5:30pm until 7pm in the high school commons, we will be hosting our Empty Bowls. We’ve done this for, I want to say, about 23 years, maybe 24 years, at Hastings, and we’ll invite the community to come in, make a donation, choose a bowl made by our wonderful students here at the high school, and have a simple meal. The idea is that you take this bowl with you as a reminder that there continue to be empty bowls in the world and in the community, and from time to time, we’re able to make an effort to help fill those bowls.”
So when you talk about students participating in this, are those volunteer students, or is this a part of the class?
“So, all of my students have four ceramics classes this semester, and they’re all involved in some way. There’s somewhat of a hierarchy where my intro students are chipping in a single bowl, as that takes them longer to do it all the way up through my wheel throwers on level four are making 10 bowls for the event.”
So how many bowls total, typically, are made for this kind of event?
“Yeah, my goal for recent memory has been to make about 300. Yeah, so with all those different students chipping in different amounts, and I’ll end up throughout the year making maybe 50 or something like that, I’ll have past students that aren’t in it. Sometimes other art teachers in the district will make some, but our goal is to have about 300 bowls.”
Well, I noticed that class is over, but there are still kids here in the ceramics room. Are they working on a single project or for the event?
“No, it’s pretty typical, especially these students, but it’s a nice place after school; it’s a great facility to have available. I tell them they’re lucky, because after graduating, this will cost a lot of money to have this kind of facility available. So, we often, oftentimes after school, have somewhere around a half a dozen or 10 students that want to work on their projects or just make extra work that they want to have for their lives.”
On Wednesday, April 15, at 5:30pm, be at Hastings High School. This is one way to fight hunger here in our community and globally.
Casperson offers a ‘thank you’ to the public.
“I’m just really appreciative to have the community of Hastings support the Empty Bowls event. It’s grown, and it’s bigger and bigger every year. Our Hastings Family Service is a terrific resource. They do so much to support the community in such a variety of ways, and they’re great partners to work with. And the community has continued to get behind this idea, which makes it a rich and powerful experience for the kids that are involved to see this support from the community and see what a big deal it is.”
[To listen to the broadcast, click the soundbite.]