BA (Hons) Jewellery Design

Course detail This degree course is for students who want to consider, design and produce exciting and original contemporary jewellery.

It's distinctive because it promotes understanding of a wide variety of approaches and contexts that contemporary jewellers can use or operate in. BA Jewellery Design offers a stimulating learning environment in which innovation, originality and excellence are encouraged and developed.

BA Jewellery Design is part of the Jewellery and Textiles Programme. We aim to help you find and develop an individual identity and recognise appropriate ways of working after graduation. We also aim to initiate an awareness of cultural issues relevant to jewellery and encourage investigation of the social responsibilities and ethical implications of jewellery manufacture.

BA Jewellery Design has excellent links with industry. You'll take part in live projects where your work is seen by leading figures in the jewellery field. This is beneficial not just as a learning activity - it's also extremely valuable for the professional contacts it offers.

BA Jewellery Design promotes active learning through a series of units structured as a means of initiating, developing and realising ideas. These units provide a broad but intensive introduction to observational, analytical, critical and communication skills. Lectures by high profile designers and practitioners allow BA Jewellery Design students contact with professional practice and opportunity for discussion and debate. On top of the many resources, museums, galleries and shops available to BA Jewellery Design students in London, we run international study trips to galleries, exhibitions and trade fairs during Stages One and Two.

We emphasise visual awareness, observation and experimentation as tools for research, and drawing as a means of both investigating and communicating ideas. Information and computer technologies are progressively being integrated into the curriculum, and increasingly students are able to use CAD techniques in their work. You'll gain knowledge and experience of professional practice via in-house and live projects throughout the degree course.

Running alongside the degree course is a cultural studies programme offering opportunities to view ideas and work in a wider cultural context.

Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications the levels for a BA are: level four (which is stage one of the course), level five and level six.

There's a progression point at the end of each level and, in order to progress, all units of the preceding level must normally have been passed.

If you're unable to continue on the course a Certificate of Higher Education (Cert HE) will normally be offered following the successful completion of level four, or a Diploma in Higher Education following the successful completion of Level 5.

To gain a BA (Honours), students must successfully complete 360 credits. The final award consists of marks from Level 6 units only, weighted according to their credits.

Autumn term:
Monday 24 September 2018 – Friday 7 December 2018
Spring term:
Monday 7 January 2019 – Friday 15 March 2019
Summer term:
Monday 15 April 2019 – Friday 21 June 2019

• BA Jewellery Design website
• The Winterson Prize
• Museum & Study Collection

Course outline

Each stage equates to one year's study, and is divided into three terms.

A comprehensive grounding in visual, technical and material research together with design and making skills provides a sound basis from which to explore ideas. Stage One introduces you to basic workshop skills and techniques. Projects offer different ways of generating and developing ideas, with a focus on creative use of resources, originality, risk taking, technical competence and material expression. How a piece of jewellery relates to the body and its movements is seen as important. Later in Stage One, project briefs require you to design specifically for particular contexts.

In Stage Two you consider different approaches to jewellery design and test out the different contexts jewellers might operate in. Stage Two examines the possibilities and responsibilities of the jeweller. Projects help to assess and develop your abilities and skills in relation to the outcome required. Emphasis is on professional criteria - you'll be introduced to imaginative ways of exploring ideas within commissioning and production constraints. We'll also encourage you to develop an individual identity and a personal perspective in your designs.

During this stage, work is self-directed. You'll have the chance to concentrate on producing a final body of work which is based on an area of individual concern and which is thoroughly researched and developed. This work is identified through a written statement, contextual, material and technical research, and prototypes. As in all years, you'll get advice and help through individual and group tutorials, reviews and critiques. Collections are displayed in a public exhibition at the end of the year. Personal and Professional Development focuses now on approaching shops and galleries, making press contacts, pricing and presenting work, and on other aspects of professional practice.

In Stage Two you begin work on your degree dissertation research. It provides you with an opportunity to carry out an extended body of research on a subject of your choice in negotiation with your tutor.

The dissertation, which is completed in Stage Three, may be weighted at 20 or 40 credits, balanced with your main study practice. It consolidates research and writing skills, offering you a unique opportunity to develop a cultural study of your own.

The cultural studies programme is designed to enhance your communication, research, critical and writing skills. The discipline involves the study of cultural and creative processes, but goes beyond history and theory of art and design to encompass various aspects of cultural knowledge. In stage one and two you attend lectures and seminars on units relating to the city and creative culture, you explore key cultural concepts and choose from a range of elective choices such as art and fashion, postcolonialism, visual cultures, the body and sexuality. In the final stage of your degree you undertake dissertation research under the supervision of an assigned tutor who supports your research on a subject of your choice. It may be weighted at 20 or 40 credits. The dissertation is a written project where you explore an aspect of visual, textual material or spatial culture. There are many areas to explore in the cultural studies programme such as art, design, technology, concepts of taste, material culture, multiculturalism, identity politics, gender, consumerism, ethics, sustainability and media studies.

PPD helps to prepare you for employment and career development by providing you with skills to enable you to take responsibility for your own learning. The core study of Jewellery Design also helps develop many of these transferable skills, which play their part in equipping you for a professional career and the generic activities of creative practice.

PPD is integral to BA Jewellery Design and is embedded in many aspects of both the studio and cultural studies programmes as a planned part of their structure and learning content. PPD activities take place in all Stages of the degree course and aim to improve your capacity to understand what and how you are learning and to help you to review, plan and take responsibility for your own learning. A considerable number of the skills learned in the academic context of the Course have a wider value and use in other areas of life. These transferable skills are highly valued by employers.

In Stage One there's a study trip to Amsterdam and in Stage Two there's a visit to an international trade fair. These are valuable learning experiences, offering insight into the artistic and commercial worlds of jewellery design and related fields.

EC One Gallery, London, sponsors the final Stage One project. Students deliver their work to the gallery, with all the required professional paperwork for feedback and display. We run a variety of events and competitions with the Goldsmiths Company, and promote first-year entry into the annual British Art Medal society student competition.

Live projects include collaborations with Cartier, Swaroski Crystals, Links of London, Folli Follie, Cool Diamonds, The Worshipful Company of Tin Platerers, alias Wireworkers.

BA Jewellery Design Programme Specification 2018/19 (PDF, 411KB)

Industry collaborations

Working with paying clients on live briefs will give you valuable commercial experience which may mean your work being taken forward for production or, if so desired, in the purchase of your intellectual property. All paid projects are conducted within a carefully developed legal framework, which includes student agreements to protect your work and help you realise its commercial value.

Recent client projects in the Textiles and Jewellery programme include: Cool Diamonds | Swarovski | Nissan | Avakian | Topshop | Chow Tai Fook | Legle.

Once you’ve graduated, you may be picked as part of a small team to work on a live creative brief, organised by our Business and Innovation department, under the supervision of an experienced tutor. This can be a valuable first step in working professionally in a chosen discipline and has resulted in graduates being hired by clients.

Facilities

• Jewellery (1st Floor)

  Find out more about our jewellery workshops

• CAD

  Find out more about our CAD workshop

• Photography

  Find out more about our photography facilities at King's Cross

Staff

Course Leader: Caroline Broadhead
Senior Lecturer, Year Tutor for Stage One: Giles Last
Senior Lecturer and Lead Tutor for Stage Two: Max Warren
Senior Lecturer, Year Tutor for Stage Three: Lin Cheung
Associate Lecturer: Naomi Filmer
Associate Lecturer: Katy Hackney
Associate Lecturer: Marlene McKibbin
Senior Technician: Campbell Muir
Cultural Studies co-ordinator: Jane Tynan