Stop Food Insecurity at UCLA

The UCLA Department of Art and UCLA Ceramics Lab empowers students to reshape their worlds through critical inquiry and transformative creativity. Our Ceramics Lab's mission is to expand its communal work into social justice work. With your participation in our 3rd Annual Yummy Bowl Benefit, we can continue giving back to our Bruin community by addressing food insecurity on campus. The Yummy Bowl Benefit is a campus collaborative fundraiser in which students, staff, and faculty members make handmade ceramic bowls to raise money and awareness for UCLA’s Community Programs Office (CPO) Food Closet. The goal of the Benefit is to highlight and amplify the good work of our on-campus food closet while also bringing attention to this pressing issue of food insecurity at UCLA.

2024 3rd Annual Yummy Bowl Benefit

Hosted by the UCLA Department of Art, UCLA Ceramics Area, UCLA Community Programs Office (CPO), Lulu (the acclaimed restaurant at the Hammer Museum), and UCLA Development

Date: Wednesday, May 15

Location: UCLA Broad Art Center Plaza

Time: 11:30 am - 1:30 pm

100% of the funds raised through the 2024 Yummy Bowl Benefit will support the UCLA CPO Food Closet.

The Food Closet was established in 2009 and is an anonymous resource that offers food and other basic necessities to students and community members struggling to attain food or experiencing additional financial challenges. It serves as an emergency relief program on-campus that helps to meet the short-term food security needs of the UCLA community, including all UCLA students (undergraduate and graduate), staff, visiting scholars, student researchers, postdocs, and faculty who need food. It is a fully stocked pantry with fresh produce, beverages, bread, canned foods, and hygiene products. Donations from the Yummy Bowl Benefit will support the daily operations of CPO's service and resources, including their On The Go Food Cart Program, Food Box Giveaway Program, Grocery Bundle Program, and much more!

On Wednesday, May 15, all bowls will be available for pick up at UCLA Broad Art Center Plaza on campus from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lulu, the restaurant at the Hammer Museum, will serve a yummy vegetarian dish that you can fill your bowl with.

** All bowls must be picked up in person on May 15 at the Yummy Bowl Benefit. There is a limit of 3 bowls per person. 

** Bowls that are not picked up will be used for future bowl benefits to support the UCLA Food Closet. 

** Bowls cannot be reserved in advance. 

** All bowls will be selected at the time of the event by participants.

UCLA Department of Art’s Ceramics Lab is one of the amazing making spaces located on the ground floor of the Broad Art Center. The 5,000+ square foot space includes a large throwing and hand-building room, a glaze room, a kiln yard, and a tool closet. The lab is also equipped with work tables and throwing wheels that can accommodate any throwing style, a variety of electric and gas-fired kilns that range from 6 cubic feet to a large car kiln, a walk-in spray booth, plaster mold-making equipment, extruders, slip mixing equipment, a hand-cranked forklift, a hydraulic lift cart, and a huge variety of materials. It glazes that our students transform into works of art. There is even a clean room and library used for lectures and critiques.

Candice Lin and Anna Sew Hoy have led the Ceramics Area since 2019. They understand Ceramics to be a medium that touches many parts of contemporary life, used to make dinnerware and plumbing pipes, as well as art. Our mission is to expand on the communal nature of clay-making, where people work together to load kilns and share building techniques, towards its overlap with social justice and community-engaged work. The first Yummy Bowl Benefit took place in 2021 after the COVID pandemic in response to an overwhelming number of students identifying as food insecure. By working together in mutual support, each subsequent Yummy Bowl has strengthened bonds between the students, faculty and staff of the Department of Art and with the broader community at UCLA as well.

Thank you to the UCLA Friends of Clay and our many volunteers for their support in the creation of the bowls.

SHOULD THIS FUND REACH THE CAMPUS MINIMUM REQUIRED FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN ENDOWMENT OR QUASI-ENDOWMENT, THE UCLA FOUNDATION RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CONVERT THIS FUND TO AN ENDOWMENT OR QUASI-ENDOWMENT.  PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW THE UCLA FOUNDATION INVESTS AND MANAGES ITS ENDOWMENTS. CLICK HERE TO READ THE UCLA FOUNDATION'S DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS FOR DONORS.