Each year, members of the GLPG participate in a variety of community activities. Guild members donate hand-made bowls to the Empty Bowls event, an international fundraiser by potters to raise money for local food banks, shelters and soup kitchens and increase awareness of hunger-related issues. To learn about other community activities from previous years, click here.

Empty Bowls
October 15, 2013
Lunch: 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Dinner: 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm
Cooley Law School's Temple Conference Center
217 S. Capitol Avenue
Lansing, Michigan

Empty Bowls is a community activity with the goal of providing support for food banks, soup kitchens, and other organizations that fight hunger. Potters make and donate ceramic bowls, in which a simple meal of soup and bread is served. As shown in this picture from 2007, guests may choose their bowls and keep the bowl as a reminder of hunger in the world.

The Lansing Empty Bowls fund raiser is organized and staffed by the Greater Lansing Food Bank and made possible by Lansing area potters, restaurants, bakeries and local musicians.

GLPG members donated 275 bowls in 2012 to the Empty Bowls fund raiser for local food banks. Each customer could choose a hand-made bowl and also received soup and bread for a meal. The food and venue and the workers' time were also all donated to the cause. The Greater Lansing Food Bank raised more than $10,000 this year. To learn more about Empty Bowls, click here.

GLPG members have joined other local artisans in displaying and demonstrating their craft at several community events, including the East Lansing Art Festival and the October 2009 Apple Butter Festival at Fenner Arboretum in Lansing. The Guild facility itself has been scheduled for tours and pottery-making demonstrations for the Greater Lansing Visitors Bureau's "Be A Tourist In Your Own Town" and for local art classes and other interested art-related groups. The pictures show Jenny Penn encouraging kids to make their marks on a small pot that she threw on the wheel at the Apple Butter Festival, and Pamela Timmons creating a hand-built, sun-face sculpture at the Guild during the Tourist-In-Your-Own-Town tour.

Additionally the Potters' guild provides an annual cash award to a local organization for pottery-related activities. The most recent award was given to REACH, a non-profit neighborhood drop-in center for art serving the southwest area of Lansing.

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