Jewellery facilities and campus
Our location
When you join us you will be immersed in the world of jewellery design and manufacture. Amid shops, factories and workshops which make much of Britain’s jewellery today, there’s no place better than Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter for an aspirational jewellery designer or emerging entrepreneur.
Our building
For a successful career in jewellery design, our Vittoria Street building is inspirational and functional. A blend of traditional historic and cutting-edge contemporary, it is light, spacious and extremely well-resourced.
An extensive refurbishment programme integrated the Victorian Gothic building of 1863 with the adjacent 1912 extension and a site further down the road. The architects’ success in doing so resulted in awards from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Civic Trust.
The building has attracted many visitors, architects and educators from across the world.
Our facilities
Studio Workshops provide cut-out work benches with lights and gas torches plus design work stations. Students can use these rooms between 8am and 8pm (5pm on Fridays), independent of staff supervision.
Process workshops contain larger soldering hearths under extraction hoods with pickling and cleaning facilities. These workshops also have polishing machines and other bench mounted powered equipment. Each studio workshop has access to one of the process workshops.
The Basement contains machinery and equipment that requires higher levels of supervision. As well as conventional tool room machines such as lathes and milling machines, this area includes rooms for casting and electro-plating, and a tool and material store.
Elsewhere in the School are:
- areas specifically dedicated to horology and gemmology
- CAD/CAM equipment
- a subject specialist library
- seminar rooms and lecture theatre
- atrium area is a lively exhibition space with a frequently changing range of shows and displays.
Assay Office
If you join one of our gemmology courses, you'll be based in new, state-of-the-art premises at 1 Moreton Street in the Jewellery Quarter. You'll have access to the highest specification of equipment available for gemmological education within the UK.
You'll be able to use equipment for testing diamonds at Assay Office Birmingham's AnchorCert Gem Laboratory, and have more opportunities to take part in gemmological research.
