What if art could help make smart food choices more fun, delicious and beautiful for kids?

BACKGROUND:

After receiving an Art Means Business grant from Glass House Collective, General Manager Christina Mack and her Save-A-Lot team knew they wanted to create a project that engaged local kids around their health. They also knew that their Glass Street location made the building a prime spot for a mural. How could the mural work over-time to connect with local kids?

NEED:

Work with mural artist Cristhian Saravia — aka Golden — to create an art installation that drives kids towards healthier food choices and helps the whole neighborhood get excited about the fresh produce available at the area’s newest grocery story.

WHAT WE DID:

We connected our Save-A-Lot partners with the outreach programs Young Ladies of Power and Archway Kids to host a day of taste-testing and fun. To prepare, we chatted with muralist Golden to create coloring pages that the kids could work on and talk about, all with the goal of giving Golden a bit of inspiration for his upcoming mural. The pages featured beautiful fruits and vegetables that the kids could color — but how about taste?

Piggybacking off of a fall-break visit to Booker T. Washington State Park, we brought Asia Wiggins from I Am Fitness and her epic juicing powers to the kids for an afternoon of taste-testing fresh juices. From celery and beets to ginger and apple, the kids had a chance to learn about each piece of produce and taste the juice for themselves. At the end of the day, they were each given a jar to create their own custom juice, putting together the ingredients they’d tried.

And of course, there was coloring. As the kids learned about each fruit and vegetable, they added new layers of color and fun to their coloring pages, which our GHC team scanned and shared with Golden. These sheets, along with quotes, poems and stories from the kids, became the basis for his mural.

In early November 2021, Golden turned all these inputs from the community into a big, bold, beautiful mural along the Save-A-Lot — conveniently just six feet away from the door to the market’s produce section. The mural brings color to the block, but it also shows our kids that their input matters.

VISION:

Ultimately, the goal of this work was two-fold: bring a bright mural to Glass Street, but also help kids see the delicious, wonderful bounty of the fresh produce in their local market. By introducing them to new fruits and vegetables, the project opens up the possibilities for their healthy snacking — and makes a big celebration of their creative work.

PARTNERS:

Young Ladies of Power

Archway Kids

Save-A-Lot

Asia Wiggins, I Am Fitness

J Adams, Photographer