2017/2, стр. 123 - 132

THE “FOOD ON CANVAS” TRAINING COURSE AS A CREATIVE APPROACH TO CROSS- CURRICULAR LEARNING

Elena Sayanova
Vocational High School of Tourism and Catering – City of Razlog

Abstract. The article presents the training course “Food on Canvas”, which addresses several fields of education and training – Culinary Arts, Art History, English, Health education along with some elements of Museum education and focuses on the course curriculum as well as some the teaching resources including online course. The course offers open educational resources, which are exible e-learning paths suited for both autonomous and teacher facilitated learning. The idea of the course is to promote teaching Culinary Arts in the Visual Arts Historical and Cultural Context, to perfect English speaking skills by involving our students into various activities related to arts, food consumption and the language acquisition. We want our students to be aware that getting in the habit of being productive in all aspects of their lives will dictate the quality of their lives. The course consists of various activities – lectures, tutorials, master classes, small projects, independent tasks and educational trips to museums.

Keywords: training course, museum education, teaching resources, language skills, quality of life

“Courses and subjects that fail to reinvent themselves in the face of new circumstances are liable to decline or disappear.”

Kirk, Macdonald & Tinning

The Social Construction of Pedagogic Discourse

“A cross-curricular approach to teaching is characterised by sensitivity towards, and a synthesis of, knowledge, skills and understandings from various subject areas. These inform an enriched pedagogy that promotes an approach to learning which embraces and explores this wider sensitivity through various”.

Jonathan Savage
Cross-Curricular Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School

Who is in charge of developing creative approaches to cross-curricular teaching and learning? Is this the responsibility of the school staff through the implementation of a whole school strategy? Or should it be individual subject teachers or wider groups that encompass other professionals? No doubt that all of the above can play a part in developing approaches to cross-curricular teaching and learning.

Some schools are making effective use of creative approaches to learning. Those teachers try their best to encourage pupils to make connections across traditional boundaries, speculate constructively, maintain an open mind while exploring a wide range of options, which has a positive inuence on pupils’ personal development, as well as on their preparation for life beyond school.

To face the challenges of today’s educational circumstances, the teacher should be able to develop a whole range of new skills, such as designing an authoring syllabus in accordance with the national school curriculum; make informed choices of teaching techniques, course books and supplementary materials; provide crosscurriculum links and collaborate with teachers of other subjects; employ appropriate styles of leadership and classroom strategies; make use of action research and their own strategic competence to cope with diculty in the teaching process as well as introduce innovation. We strongly believe that the centralized curricular should be enriched with individually prepared authoring curricular developed in particular schools. Teachers should have an opportunity to prepare their own authoring curriculum with emphasis on inter-subject links together with active and interactive teaching/learning methods and techniques.

The course “Food on Canvas” addresses several fields of education and training – Culinary Arts, Art History, English, Health education along with some elements of Museum education 1). The course offers open educational resources, which are uploaded to the project on-line platform as exible e-learning paths suited for both autonomous and teacher facilitated learning.

The learners are expected to obtain an increased sense of initiative; increased competence in foreign languages; increased level of digital competence; greater understanding and responsiveness to social, linguistic and cultural diversity. The project activities are expected to inspire interest and creativity in young people, and an awareness of the wider world and their place in it. The students will have more incentive to learn, greater retention of knowledge, deeper understanding and more positive attitudes toward the subject being taught. In addition, they will become more aware of healthy eating.

Such course can help educational practitioners to learn how to create a learning environment which increases students’ involvement in, and responsibility for, the learning process. It, in turn, will lead to enhancing the quality and relevance of the learning offer; fostering the provision and the assessment of transversal skills particularly entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills; promoting take-up of innovative practices in education and training by supporting personalized learning approaches, collaborative learning and critical thinking, strategic use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), open educational resources (OER), open and exible learning and virtual mobility.

The course curriculum

1. Goals and rationale of the course. The course contributes to filling a specific gap between Arts and Vocational Education as well as compliment to the traditional subjects such as English taught within school programmes.

The idea of the course is to promote teaching Culinary Arts in the Visual Arts Historical and Cultural Context, to perfect English speaking skills by involving our students into various activities related to arts, food consumption and the language acquisition. We want our students to be aware that getting in the habit of being productive in all aspects of their lives will dictate the quality of their lives. The course message is; Get in the habit of producing art and you will develop good habits at school, home, and work. Young people get a great deal out of taking part in creative activities as they develop collaboration, negotiation, problem-solving, creative thinking and absolute dedication to the realisation of a goal – all skills valuable in any employment area. This kind of participation helps give young people the tools to build better futures for themselves, whatever paths they choose, something that is particularly important for many youngsters today placed at risk of becoming marginalised or excluded.

The course consists of various activities – lectures, tutorials, master classes, small projects, independent tasks and educational trips to museums. Our view is that museums as a sector that offers a huge and still relatively untapped resource which can support inspiration and learning in its widest sense – for everyone. More than ever, young people need the chance for self-reection and the opportunity, which arts can provide, for developing the creative skills for a new economy. Younger generations have been raised with computers and are used to having access to information at the touch of a button. Most museum websites have on-line exhibits along with general information about the museum and its collection. By involving visiting museums (both real and virtual), we intend to attract teachers and students’ attention to the role of museums in young people’s wellbeing and learning.

The course curriculum and the relevant teaching materials we developed can be of significant importance for teachers to foster particular attitudes, methods and styles in line with a more learner-centred approach which redefines the traditional student-teacher relationship in the classroom and can include collaborative research projects, group projects, debates, study teams, peer-to-peer teaching as face-to-face classroom instruction will be integrated with online components that helps to extend learning beyond the classroom or school day.

Some of the numerous activities include:

– educational field trips including visiting the local, regional and national Art museums and Art Galleries in order to find paintings showing different dishes followed by doing research into identifying the ingredients and cooking the dishes from paintings; photographing them and, afterwards, mounting small exhibitions in school cafeterias/canteens/halls. Exhibitions are to present numerous sets of the following: a painting reproduction accompanied by a photo of the same dish made by students and the dish recipe;

– making “Master Class” videos that show how to cook the dishes from paintings - on the grounds of the findings from educational field trips to the national museums and art galleries;

– workshop “Attractive Presentation of a Meal” – making homemade food and arranging the outcomes as a work of art;

– activity “Color and Visual Appearance in Foods” – using food as an art medium or subject to create “foodscapes”, paintings, sculptures, i.e. making pictures by using foods – seeds, beans, spices, etc.

– activity “Writing a Critical Analysis of a Work of Art related to food”. The students/ learners are familiarized with particular writing techniques and are given a layout to follow;

– the Healthy Eating Awareness and Education Initiative, which aims to communicate the psychology of healthy food vs. unhealthy food with visual arts. The Healthy Eating Awareness and Education Initiative promotes healthy eating and mainly consists of studying paintings by national artists of farming, farm animals, farmland landscapes, harvest, barn yard scenes together with talks about benefits of eating cereals, corns and the like; producing collages concerning food sending a message about improving eating habits among students and staff (collages contain not only food ingredients but also chemicals; some collages can be done as a junk food still life of sweets and cookies or with empty junk food packages); delivering small talks accompanied by exhibitions at the local schools.

The course is intended for secondary school students; vocational school students; teachers of relevant subjects; adult learners who take Culinary Arts courses; trainers who deliver Culinary Arts courses; those who organize extra-curricular activities in educational institutions.

2. Purpose of teaching. The course “Food on Canvas” allows students to acquire the following competencies:

a) General

General scientific competence: the ability to use basic knowledge of Art History/ Culinary Arts; the ability to acquire new knowledge, using modern educational and information technology; the ability to collect, process, interpret and use modern Information Technology data, which is necessary to generate judgments on relevant issues.

General cultural, social and personal competences: the ability to build and implement a long-term line of intellectual, cultural and professional self-development and selfimprovement; tolerance and cultural awareness; ability to work independently and in a team; social skills, the ability to critically rethink one’s social experience.

Instrumental: the ability to use skills in verbal and visual information from various sources, including ancient, classical and modern sources for social and professional problems; the ability to both written and oral intercultural communication in social and professional activities; the ability to use the resources of the Internet for Art History and Culinary Arts educational purposes.

b) Specific

– knowledge of basic terms in Art History;

– awareness of the main artistic styles and trends from the ancient world to the 21st century; 3) acquisition of basic experience in analyzing works of art;

– the ability to create works of art;

– the ability to use works of arts as an educational tool;

– a better command of the English language;

– overall improving of cultural awareness.

The course “Food on canvas” consists of 11 modules:

1. Food in Prehistoric times drawing.

2. Food depicted by Ancient Greeks and Romans.

3. Food in Renaissance Painting.

4. Introducing kitchen and market-type painting by the Dutch painters in the 16th-17th c.

5. Modern paintings with food (Impressionism and Post).

6. Modern paintings with food (Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism).

7. Contemporary paintings with food (Pop artists).

8. The Biblical feasts.

9. Food in American Art.

10. Food in Russian Art.

11. National Artists’ works - a message for Healthy food.

3. Scope of the course and types of educational work

Culinary Art/ Art Production. The act of producing art. The task of creating art. Students are expected to develop techniques and skills through hands-on involvement in a variety of culinary art/art experiences. Examples: drawing, painting, making collages, cooking, decorating dishes, etc.

Historical and Cultural Context. The students will recognize a variety of art forms and art relating to a particular historical period and/or a geographic location.

Critical Response. Students will evaluate and respond critically to works from the visual arts of various individuals and cultures, showing they understand important features of the work. Students use art vocabulary to analyze art.

Aesthetic Response. The philosophy of interpreting a work of art. A viewer of a piece of art observes the style and technique of an artist and then explains the meaning of the artwork or the intent of the artist.

Culinary Arts. As a result of study of discipline a student must know basic concepts, terms and definitions of Culinary Arts; color schemes; various methods of decoration of dishes; design features of various festivities.

4. Contents/topics and horrarium

Module 1. “Food in Prehistoric Times” – 3 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Food in Prehistoric times drawing. Cave drawings.

Topic 2. Depicting animals. Hunting scenes.

The task of reconstructing the diet of our prehistoric ancestors is rather dicult but not impossible due to the fact that some evidence may survive in a variety of different forms: mounds of discarded seashells, the bones of wild and domestic animals and the remains of plants. So whether the evidence concerns the hunters of the Paleolithic or the first farmers of the Neolithic or the Celtic chieftains of the late Iron Age, we do have quite a number of clues to help us reconstruct their diet. There is some information about the foods which were eaten by our ancestors and there are some attempts to recreate authentic recipes. For instance, they used a variety of wild vegetation and this is reected in recipes such as Nettle Puree, Easter Ledge Pudding (using dandelion leaves) and boiled Sea Urchins.

Module 2. “Food depicted by Ancient Greeks and Romans’ – 6 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Art of Ancient Greece.

Ancient Greek Painting; Art Perspective in Ancient Greece; Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Vase Painting; Ancient Greek Pottery

The Mycenaean collection (800 B.C.), which contains treasures from royal tombs, including miniatures, stelae and cups from famous Vafio beehive tomb.

Topic 2. Art of Ancient Rome.

Artefacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and particularly the Pompeian mural painting. A wide variety of Roman painting themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. Scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses.

Roman still life depicting a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells.

Module 3. “Food in Renaissance Painting” – 12 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Renaissance and Baroque: identifying concepts and canvas.

Topic 2. Renaissance and Baroque: painting analysis. Carracci’s The Bean Eater. The tale of The Stone Soup.

Topic 3. The “Renaissance” in the Netherlands – the development and modification of the national traditions of Gothic art. Christian pantheism. Attention to human modesty. Oil painting, realism, rendering fine mental organization depicted in the works of the characters. Robert Campin – Founder of the Flemish school of painting. “Christmas” (1425). Daily life as a holy righteousness.

Topic 4. The Portuguese Art: the Mediterranean diet on canvas. Josefa de Óbidos and conventual pastry.

Module 4. “Introducing kitchen and market-type painting by the Dutch painters in the 16th-17th centuries” – 12 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work Topic 1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (peasant). “Hunters in the Snow” (1565). Visualization of religious hunting.

Topic 2. Historical and cultural situation of the Netherlands and Flanders the XVII century. Paintings of the “Small Dutch” and their genre diversity . Rembrandt. Rubens. Vermeer. The specificity of the artistic language of Holland XVII century.

Topic 3. Genre painting as the most distinctive feature of Dutch painting of the period.

Topic 4. Sub-types within the genre: single figures, peasant families, tavern scenes, ‘merry company’ parties, women at work about the house, scenes of village or town festivities, market scenes, barracks scenes, scenes with horses or farm animals, in snow, by moonlight, etc. Dead game, and birds/fish painted live but studied from the dead, as another staple of the Dutch diet – Abraham van Beijeren.

Topic 5. Still-life: food of all kinds laid out on a table, silver cutlery, intricate patterns in table cloths and owers. Frans Snyders and Adriaen van Utrecht.

Module 5. “Modern paintings with food (Impressionism (1865 – 1885)/ PostImpressionism (1885 – 1910)/ Expressionism (1900 – 1935)” – 14 hours of classroom instruction and 4 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Impressionism. Specificity of pre-impressionist as the artistic phenomenon, connecting the tradition of classicism, romanticism, realism and Impressionism. Edouard Manet. Analysis of the works of “Olympia” and “Luncheon on the Grass”. The specificity of the art of still life in the art of Manet.

Topic 2. Main representatives of Impressionism: Claude Monet.

Topic 3. Main representatives of Impressionism: Renoir.

Topic 4. Main representatives of Impressionism: Sisley, Pissarro.

Topic 5. Pointillism, Art Nouveau and Fauvism. Seurat was part of the NeoImpressionist movement which included Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. The word Divisionism describes the theory they followed while the actual process was known as pointillism.The effects of this technique, if used well, were often far more striking than the conventional approach of mixing colours together.

Topic 6. Vincent van Gogh. “Still Life with cabbage and Clogs”; “The Potato Eaters”; “Harvest”; “Still Life with Two Jars and Two Pumpkins”; “Basket of Potatoes”.

Module 6. “Modern paintings with food (Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism (1905 – 1920)” – 6 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Geometrism. Cubism, invented by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the first abstract style of modern art. Cubist paintings ignore the traditions of perspective drawing and show you many views of a subject at one time. Pablo Picasso.

Futurism, a revolutionary Italian movement that celebrated modernity. The Futurist vision is outlined in a series of manifestos that attacked the long tradition of Italian art in favor of a new avant-garde. They glorified of urban life.

Topic 2. Suprematism, a geometric style of abstract painting derived from elements of Cubism and Futurism. Malevich rejected any use of representational images, believing that the non-representational forms of pure abstraction had a greater spiritual power and an ability to open the mind to ‘the supremacy of pure feeling’.

Juan Gris Jules Henri Fernand Lger (1881 – 1955), Piet Mondrian. Renato Guttuso. Topic 3. ‘Surrealism’ as the artistic movement of the fine arts of the XX century. The term “surrealism”. The concept of “surrealism” and its philosophical foundations (the key points). Masters and works: Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Francois Rene Magritte, Joan Mir–, Paul Klee

Module 7. “Contemporary paintings with food (Pop artists)”- 9 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Pop Art.

Celebrating commonplace objects and people of everyday life, seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art. Elevation of the everyday to high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the status of the art object itself, emphasizing art’s place as, at base, a commodity.

Topic 2. Famous American Pop-Artists – Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein. Claes Oldenburg, Wayne Thiebaud.

Module 8. “The Biblical feasts” – 9 hours of classroom instruction and 3 hours of independent work

Topic 1. Food on Canvas in Old Testament. Old Testament is the name the first Christians gave the collection of Jewish holy books. It tells the history of the Jewish people and of Israel – the exclusive treaty between God and the Israelites.

Tintoretto ‘Belshazzar`s Feast’. Master of the Cathering of the Manna ‘The Gathering of the Manna’. Mattia Preti ‘The Feast of Absalom’. Giorgio Vasari ‘The Banquet of Esther and Abasuerus’.

Topic 2. Food on Canvas in New Testament

The name New Testament is introduced in the gospel to Matthew, during the Last Supper. Felippo Lippi “The Dance of Salome, from Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist”. Paolo Veronese “The Feast in the Levi”. Hieroniymus Bosch “The Mirrae at Cana”. Master of the Housebook “The Last Supper”. Pontormo “The Supper at Emmaus”.

Module 9. “Food in Russian Art” – 4 hours of classroom instruction and 2 hours of independent work

Russian Impressionism. Valentin Serov’s “Girl with Peaches” and “Girl Illuminated by the Sun”, Konstantin Korovin’s portraits, landscapes and still-lifes, Isaac Levitan’s “Birch Grove”and “March”, Ilya Repin’s studies for the group portrait “Ceremonial Sitting of the State Council”, Igor Grabar’s “February Azure”and Mikhail Larionov’s “Rose Bush”. The Impressionists were the first to turn their attention to the provinces, the custodian of Russian national traditions, with their ancient towns, quaint churches, motley signboards, noisy bazaars and exotic local lifestyle.

Konstantin Korovin “At the tea table’. Boris Kustodiev ‘Maslenitza’.

Module 10. “Food in American Art”

American art and Eating. Thanksgiving: the American Food Fest. Art and Sociability in the mid-19th Century. Paintings with Food in the Century. Doris Lee “Thanksgiving”. Francis W. Edmonds “Epicure”.

Module 11. “National Artists’ works – a message for Healthy food”

Bulgarian Art: Vladimir Dimitrov, the Master. Grain as inseparable part of the Bulgarian Cuisine.

Independent Studies. Independent Studies mostly include: 1. doing research into a particular period of Art History/School of Art/Biography/ Piece of Art; 2. producing a Creative writing piece; 3. cooking/making master-class videos.

The tutor develops a schedule for the students’ tasks, which should contain the topic/ short description of the task and its deadline. Teachers have to give explanations on the structure and design of the work to do. The students’ independent work should be made as an essay, a Power Point or Prezi presentation or a video. Creative written work must not be plagiarized and should include links to all used ideas, definitions, and findings.

Paintings to analyse/ topics of creative written work.

15,000 – 10,000 B.C. Frieze of Animals Cave of Lascaux, France Animal Hunt

1550 B.C. The Harvesters’ Vase Crete, Minoan

1450 B.C. Harvesting Thebes,

550 B.C. Beating of Olive Trees Amphora, Greek

500 B.C. She-Wolf; Statue Etruscan Art

1413 – 1416 Book of Hours The Limbourg Bros.

c. 1495 – 98 The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci

1565 The Seasons of the Year Pieter Bruegel

1601 Supper at Emmaus M. Carravaggio

1795 The Reaper George Stubbs

1850 The Sower Francois Millet

1888 – 90 Still Life with Basket Paul Cezanne

1876 Holiday Jacques Joseph Tissot

1914 Tavern Pablo Picasso

1962 Kitchen Stove Roy Lichtenstein

1963 Pie Counter Wayne Thiebaud.

The Curriculum also contains the structure and content of the course ‘Food on Canvas’ modules in the shape of a table as well as ‘Creative Writing Instructions’.

Overall, educationalists should balance opportunities for creative ways of learning with secure coverage of National Curriculum subjects and skills, encourage pupils to be independent and creative learners, support various activities that contribute to developing pupils of all abilities as confident and creative learners.

More creative teaching and learning has common strengths in addition to a good basic coverage of the requirements of the national curricula. Although the following are common aspects of any good syllabus, the balanced combination of well-organized crosscurricular links, a focus on experiential learning with knowledge, understanding and skills developed through first-hand, practical experience and evaluation, well-integrated use of technology along with a broad and accessible range of activities support creative learning very successfully.

NOTES

1. The course curriculum and all the teaching resources including the online course can be found at www.foodoncanvas.eu.

2. List of information resources for the course: http://www.chart.ac.uk/vlib/a-zlinks.html; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/food/hd_food.htm;

http://emptyeasel.com/2009/04/16/the-long-history-of-food-in-art/;

http://avorwire.com/330516/the-greatest-food-still-lifes-in-art-history; ttp://www.crystalinks.com/romeart.html; http://www.all-art.org/; http:// arthistoryresources.net/; http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub367/ item2014.html; http://www.artbible.info/art/; http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/ prehistoric/cave-painting.htm; http://thepaleodiet.com/; http://www.artic.edu/ art-and-appetite-american-painting-culture-and-cuisine; http://www.visual-artscork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm

REFERENCES

Savage, J. & Fautley, M. (2007). Creativity in Secondary Education. Exeter: Learning Matters.

Savage, J. (2011). Cross-Curricular Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School. Routledge.

Kirk, D., Macdonald, D. &Tinning, R. (1997) The Social Construction of Pedagogic Discourse in Physical Teacher Education in Australia. The Curriculum Journal 8:2, 271 – 98.

Roberts, P. (2006). Nurturing creativity in young people: a report to Government to inform future policy. DfES/DCMS.

(2008) Curriculum Innovation in Schools. London: Ofsted.

(2010). Learning: Creative Approaches that Raise Standards (a survey that evaluates and illustrates how 44 schools in the UK used creative approaches to learning). London: Ofsted.

Boddington, A., Boys. J. & Speight, C. (2013). Museums and Higher Education Working Together – Challenges and Opportunities. Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Malaguzzi, S. (2008). Food and Feasting in Art, The Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Riley, G. (2015). Food in Art from Prehistory to the Ranaissance, London: Reaktion Books.

Barter, J. A. (2013). American Painting, Culture and Cuisine, The Art Institute of Cicago.

 Dr. Elena Sayanova
Vocational High School of Tourism and Catering
1, Kalinovo Str.

2760 Razlog, Bulgaria
E-mail: esayanova@yahoo.com