Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Hometown Food Security Project (HFSP) and Hormel Foods Corporation, in collaboration with Austin High School, invite residents of Austin and surrounding communities to attend “A Work of Art: Creating Food Security.”

The exhibition will showcase creative projects produced by local high school students with a theme of fighting food insecurity in Mower County and around the world. The effort aims to empower students to share their vision and ideas for solutions.

The open house event, which is free to the public, will be held at the SPAM Museum from 4:30-7 p.m. on Thursday, April 25.

Nearly 200 pieces of art including drawings, paintings, pottery, essays and photography will be on display.

“We are so appreciative of the hard work of the Austin High School art department, who have helped create an art exposition of student work illustrating food insecurity,” said Tammy Snee, Austin community advocate and leading member of the HFSP in a Tuesday press release. “The purpose of this event is to educate community members about the food insecurity that is occurring both around the world and right here in our own backyard.”

According to Gema Alvarado-Guerrero, co-leader for HFSP and Wellness Facilitator at Hormel Foods, the students were challenged to think outside the box and get as creative as they could with their projects.

“When Tanya Rodriguez, cultural anthropologist for Hormel Foods kicked off this event with the students in March, she dared them to be audacious and bold,” Alvarado-Guerrero said. “That’s what we are really trying to showcase with this event – that creativity knows no bounds when passion and advocacy unite in an art project, sparking awareness of the problem in our hometown and knowing that our youth can do something to address it.”

Students will also be sharing their ideas about potential hunger solutions through essays they’ve worked on in AP Human Geography classes. Many of them will go on to present their ideas at the Minnesota Youth Institute, an initiative of the World Food Prize, a foundation working to reduce hunger around the world.

The students presenting their ideas to the World Food Prize Youth Institute will be available to talk about their initiative and work at the “A Work of Art: Creating Food Security” event.

“Young people have unique perspectives and insight about issues such as food insecurity. Presented through various media, we feel confident their creativity will impact everyone who attends,” Snee said.

The HFSP is a coalition of local nonprofit organizations, businesses, government agencies, schools, healthcare facilities, volunteers and hunger-relief partners with the vision that “no one goes hungry in Mower County. The coalition believes a food-secure community can be achieved, and that there’s no better place to start than in our hometown.

Anyone with questions or who want to learn more about the event can visit the HFSP’s website at https://hometownfoodsecurity.org/community-event-a-work-of-art/ or email contactus@hometownfoodsecurity.org.