Collaborative Strategies Proposal

Proposal – Collaborative Strategies


For my collaboration project, I decided to specialise in Jewellery Design, because for one of my briefs last year I made a necklace and enjoyed experimenting and working with metals in the workshop. I am collaborating with Lauren Cooley a girl who is on my course who is also specialising in Jewellery Design.
Lauren and I will together be
collaborating with a couple of Jewellery
Designers who we have found outside of the
university. We are hoping to visit their
workplace/workshop and watch them work and
get experience and to improve our skills and
learn more technical processes in Jewellery
Making. As well to learn how they came around to setting up there own business in specialising in Jewellery.

Lauren and I are intending on holding a jewellery show towards the end of the project, alongside the Jewellery Designers who had helped us and hopefully we are able to sell some of our pieces. Although Lauren and I are collaborating we both have different ideas for our own designs for our jewellery. We will both be making different style jewelleries.

We will need to sort out a venue where we set up our show, we were thinking about having it somewhere different other than the usual indoor market, perhaps in the middle of Briggate as it’s a very busy part of the town and lots of people will be passing by. Another idea was to collaborate with a fashion show and have the models wearing our jewellery and also having a stall to sell our pieces by the fashion show.

The theme of my jewellery design is based on experimental shapes in modern architecture. Combining contemporary style with traditional materials, and maybe explore the idea of rust on buildings. How rust forms and how this can shape and form onto jewellery, and onto the body. I am basing my main idea on a site, the Broadcasting Tower in Leeds. I have always been interested in photography of buildings at different view points and perspectives. So I am basing my designs from my photographs of the buildings at different angles. I intend on making wearable jewellery, necklaces, bracelets, earrings. I will be making multiples of each final design as I will be selling these at the jewellery show.

The collaboration between Lauren, me and the other Jewellery Designers will work, by them letting Lauren and I to visit their work places, to learn new skills and techniques and to use these towards my own designs. I will explore how they work in their business and how they make their jewellery. By talking through my ideas with them, hopefully they will help me better my design ideas for my collection. We will keep in contact throughout the project with the designers by phone, email, and through our blog which Lauren and I have created.

Lauren and I will be communicating daily via phone, email, through postings to our blog, and in university where we will meet and discuss our ideas for the project. I will have a sketchbook, which will contain my research, ideas, and designs.

I will get support and guidance through tutorials with Yvonne and Paula. The main places where I will be using to work are the plastic and metal workshop at the college, using drop-in sessions, and if they allow us then the workshops of the Jewellery Designers where we will be visiting. I intend on getting into the workshops early on so I can experiment with the materials and workout which is best to work with, as I am making a few to sell. This will be time consuming so I need to give myself enough time to make these.