More than 200 bowls will need filling for cash at Nanaimo District Secondary School student council’s Empty Bowl night.
NDSS student council and the school’s pottery program students have been designing, throwing and glazing clay bowls for the school’s first Empty Bowl fundraiser for Loaves and Fishes Community Food Bank.
Empty Bowl was a project started in the U.S. by Imagine/Render, a group of artist who created bowls that were sold to raise funds for local food banks. Empty Bowl has since spread internationally.
“I thought, what a great event. Not only do kids get to come in from school who’ve never done clay before, but you also have people who haven’t done clay since they’ve been in elementary school and they come,” said Jean Kloppenburg, an arts instructor at NDSS who was introduced to the Empty Bowl concept by Gabriola artist Graham Sheehan several years ago.
Empty Bowl is a high school event – in previous years it was organized at Woodlands Secondary School – that has also become a social event for community groups wanting to participate, Kloppenburg said. Often the people who create bowls they’ve donated want to keep them and buy them back at Empty Bowl dinners.
“Everybody gets to do their part, so you do your part by making a bowl and you also do your part by, hopefully, getting attached to that bowl and wanting to come to the dinner event,” Kloppenburg said.
So far about 200 bowls have been created for this year’s Empty Bowl event being hosted at the NDSS cafeteria Wednesday, Dec. 13, at 5:30 p.m. Tickets, $15 for adults or $10 for students, are available at the NDSS office. For more information, call 250-740-2000.
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