FoodLab

FoodLab is a project of Elsewhere’s education program, Colab, that partners teaching artists with local schools to produce collaborative art works and introduce contemporary creative practices.

The first session of FoodLab took place in Spring 2015. It was an after-school program organized by Elsewhere in partnership with Jackson Middle School and Communities in Schools. Two teaching artists, Anna Luisa Daigneault and Emily Ensminger, taught an 8-week after-school cooking class for a group of 6th graders, and led the students on a field trip to Elsewhere Museum.

The goal of FoodLab was to share Elsewhere’s philosophy of playfulness and education outside of Elsewhere’s walls. Students explored culinary arts, food heritage, and healthy eating habits. They created unique recipes and took pride in sharing their diverse dishes with teachers and fellow classmates in youth-led collaborative demonstrations at the end of each cooking class.

Some of the FoodLab activities included “Grilled Cheese Academy” where the students were inducted into a fictional secret school, where they made over a dozen unique grilled cheese sandwiches, using healthy gourmet ingredients. In “Smooth Operators”, the students learned how to create over ten types of smoothies using an array of frozen fruits, organic juices and experimental smoothie ingredients such as vegetables and nuts.

As a final performance, the students brainstormed their own project, and decided to cook, assemble and decorate over 100 cake pops from scratch. They also decorated their own mobile food cart, which they used to distribute the cake pops to students and teachers around the school.

This project is supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.