Jewellery for Life and its Impacts on People
30th November - 8th December 2022
A unique international event, with a Symposium, Exhibition, Workshops and Docufilm at the School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, United Kingdom.
Jewellery is not only an engagement ring! Jewellery is known to us with its multifaceted roles and values in our life but its implications in the complexities of our society mostly go unnoticed. Although jewellery is widespread in our collective imaginary, it is connected too often with pure embellishment of the human body, and surprisingly rarely reflected upon in design.
To reflect on jewellery often involves thinking about luxury jewellery or their mass-produced copies. Jewellery research is crucial in how jewellery in action in our lives is understood, designed, and researched. In these times of urgent re-considerations and reflections on our actions, researchers are encouraged to reflect upon the impact of their artefacts in society. Jewellery for Life provides opportunities to reflect on various possibilities of creating meaningful jewellery.
It offers a chance to explore multiple roles of jewellery across all areas of design, art and craft and their research. It instigates a discourse on jewellery as an aid for well-being, and as a cultural and participative design where the act of making becomes fundamental to bring participants’ knowledge expertise and experience to the fore front. It challenges preconceived ideas that jewellery is relegated to decorate the ‘female’ body as a trophy for the ‘male’ affirmation of his powerful status. Instead, Jewellery for Life shows this medium as a form of art that, for example, manifests political dissent.
Inevitably as jewellery has numerous roles in our lives, it brings joy, but it can also bring sadness as it is also associated to crime, and law. The so called ‘Jewellery law’ is an example of traumatic violence when the Danish authorities have the power to confiscate jewellery to arriving asylum seekers.
International Selection Panel for Symposium: Prof. Cees De Bont, Dr Seçil Ugur Yavuz, Dr Roberta Bernabei, and Erinn M. Cox
The symposium and exhibition is delivered in partnership with the Goldsmiths’ Centre. Including support from Loughborough University SDCA, JJR Journal of Jewellery Research and AGC Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo, Italy.
Banner image credits: Images 1. Yajie Hu, 2. Carrie Dickens & Lau Photography, 3. Helen Sutherland.