Visitors find common ground at Children’s Discovery Museum
SAN JOSE >> It was a typical day at the Children’s Discovery Museum Saturday, with excited kids whizzing past their parents and chatter filling the spacious rooms of the downtown museum. But inside a tent in the courtyard, kids and their parents were busy making cultural connections, with edible play dough and a bit of imagination.
For one day, the museum featured “A Seat at the Table,” a pop-up and performing arts installation aimed at sparking conversation across cultures and celebrating immigrant communities.
Children created food sculptures with mooncake molds, rollers and other kitchen utensils using scented play dough infused with ube powder, cinnamon, turmeric, curry, cocoa, paprika and pandan oil; spices used in ethnic dishes all over the world. Meanwhile, facilitators with the mu-
seum spoke with parents about heritage, home, identity, and shared values.
For Rajesh Bafna, of Sunnyvale, it was an opportunity to expose his 2½-year-old daughter, Amara, to many of the cultures represented all over the Bay Area, from India to Mexico and Vietnam.
“I think growing up these kids will appreciate seeing different people from different backgrounds and be able to work and live with them,” he said. “It’s a great thing.”
The cinnamon and turmeric used in the exhibit reminded Bafna of his native India. Turmeric is used in many Indian dishes and cinnamon is mixed into their tea, he said.
“I’ve never seen something like this anywhere,” Bafna said of the exhibit. “There’s an emphasis on cooking, which is a big part of our lives.”
The pop-up installation is the culmination of Common Ground, a two-year initiative launched at the museum last year to promote cultural understanding through three dinners and two community workshops. Funded in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the initiative supports the museum’s commitment to inclusion.
It hosted three Common Ground dinners with 150 community members at each, representing immigrant populations from Mexico, Vietnam, India, China, and the Philippines. The dinners used food and kitchen tools to start conversations
among the attendees about things that surprised them, concerned them, and gave them hope when they came to the United States. Two workshops continued those discussions.
“Our hope with this overall project is that we’re both celebrating all of the different immigrant groups here in the San Jose community and helping people find some commonality, especially around the hopes and dreams that all of us have for our children,” said Jenni Martin, director of strategic initiatives at the Children’s Discovery Museum.
Susie Adams, of Danville, watched as her 4-year-old daughter, Emily, squeezed brown play dough — symbolizing cocoa — into a tiny cooking mold. Adams, whose parents are Swedish and who grew up surrounded by adults from different cultural backgrounds, said she wants her daughter to “learn of different cultures and their food.”
One of the focal points of
the exhibit was a “community poem” in which people wrote on paper tags that were hung on fabric netting around the tent. On the tags they completed simple statements: “I am from..., “I am...” and “I dream...” While some messages were silly or simple one-word answers, others were deep and reflective.
One tag read: “I dream… that all people live in peace and we share our culture with others... create a world of peace, love and harmony.”
“A Seat at the Table” performing arts installation will travel to the following events in the coming months:
July 28: Veggie Fest, Martial Cottle Park, 5283 Snell Ave, San Jose; Aug. 11: Kids N Fun Fest, Cupertino Memorial Park, 21121 Stevens Creek Blvd, Cupertino; Sept. 23: Viva Calle, Monterey Road between South of First Area & Martial Cottle Park, San Jose.