University News Last updated 14 June 2011
This summer the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University will once again be running its highly successful short courses.
The School of Jewellery is located in the heart of Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter, and is the largest of its kind in Europe. Its short courses are a significant part of the School’s wide portfolio of education and training, and have been successfully running for 20 years. They offer the opportunity to anyone involved in the jewellery industry or other creative industries to learn highly specialised techniques and approaches in a relatively short time frame.
The summer courses cover a wide variety of subjects, from specialist jewellery techniques including polishing to CAD Design to gemmology. Alongside these specialist courses the School of Jewellery has also developed a Jewellery for Beginners course, perfect for those wishing to start a jewellery business in which students learn traditional making techniques and meet trade contacts by visiting jewellery quarter suppliers with tutor advice and guidance. Summer courses vary in length from one to five days and begin at the end of June 2011.
In addition to the summer courses a range of bespoke one or two day courses in Electroforming, Computer Aided Design and Anodised Aluminium Colouring are on offer, to undertake at any time of the year, tutor availability permitting.
A number of former students who began on these short courses have gone on to further study and established themselves with careers in the jewellery industry. These include well-known enameller, Jessica Turrell, who attended the Electroforming short course in 2007, and Dagmarr Korecki, who attended Diamond Awareness and Electroforming in 2010, is now listed on the Goldsmiths website’s Who’s Who.
Professor Jack Cunningham, Head of the School of Jewellery, said: “This unique facility offers an outstanding contemporary environment in which to learn and study. The short courses cover jewellery, silversmithing and gemmology, with an enviable range of traditional and cutting edge equipment and technology.”
The internationally-renowned School of Jewellery has been offering jewellery training since 1890 it has formal links with the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths’, British Jewellers Association, the British Horological Institute and Gemmological Association.
Birmingham City University is running a major awareness campaign in the Midlands to demonstrate how it is upgrading the future of individuals and companies. Find out more at www.bcu.ac.uk