It is beautiful to see how new thinking reveals itself when the right people and conditions come together. This year, our Creative Arts Programme collaborated with the Nourish team to lead a group of grade 7’s through the discovery and creation process of new menu items.
The project started in April and the first two groups did their final presentations in August where they created their menu items in the Green Café and Drie Gewels kitchens.
This project started with a Nourish workshop on healthy food journeys, where learners explored where our food comes from. They then worked in teams during the creative arts sessions to redesign a dish using ingredients from our SI garden. There were extra points given if they used indigenous edibles.
The three phases are:
Phase 1: Food Journeys workshop
Rico Wessels, who heads up our Nourish team, hosted an interactive workshop where the learners learned about food systems (“soil to plate”), healthy food choices and indigenous edible plants. The aim was to make them aware of where food comes from and how everything in the food system is interconnected. This workshop laid the foundation for the creative project that followed.
Phase 2: Redesign an existing dish
This phase took place during Creative Arts sessions. The learners were divided into four groups and each group had to assign roles (e.g. chef, creative leader, illustrator, etc.). They then had to redesign an existing dish by:
- adding one indigenous ingredient;
- using one ingredient from our own garden.
Each learner took on a role, and together they designed a recipe, illustrated it and created a story behind their dish.
Phase 3: Cooking Challenge
In the final phase, the groups prepared and cooked their dishes in the Green Café and Drie Gewels kitchen. They then presented their final dishes to a judging panel (made up of a few staff members).
The panel judged the dishes on various aspects, such as creativity, collaboration, presentation and how successfully the indigenous and garden ingredients were integrated into the final dish.
This learning project is a demonstration of how imagination and creativity spur innovation and joy, enabling learners to connect food, creativity and sustainability in a hands-on way.
One of the notable moments was taking the learners into the SI garden to harvest some of the ingredients they would be cooking with. There was something really special about watching them pick fresh ingredients and then use those in dishes they had designed themselves.
“We were amazed to see how learners started thinking differently about food. They became more curious about where ingredients come from, how they grow and how local and indigenous ingredients can be used creatively. It was also wonderful to see their teamwork and confidence grow throughout the project,” shared Caro Theron, Creative Arts Coordinator.
All the students really showed ownership of this project, but there was one student in particular who really stood out as a young chef. He showed a lot of initiative and even created his own sweet and sour syrup with lemons and sugar for the french toast.
The project has been such a success and will be repeated as part of the Creative Arts curriculum.