Beyond the Bench

The Master of Design Programme at the University of Dundee takes a radical approach to design: the challenges of today’s world mean that designers need to see the big picture and think beyond their own disciplines. Students from a range of different design, craft and related disciplines from around the world come together to discover, define and develop their skills to position themselves to make an impact on the world. 

This year, Gill Ross, who has an undergraduate degree in jewellery design from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design has created Small Campus: Big World ( http://bit.ly/cpQnwr ) a mapping service to help overseas students quickly familiarise themselves with a new city. Gill demonstrates that someone trained in a jewellery background can adapt skills acquired as a jeweller: visualising, prototyping and communication with clients and apply it in a completely new design area. Another recent example of jewellers stepping outside their comfort zone is Masters graduate Kate Pickering. On the Masters Programme, Kate worked on a research project with Deutsche Telekom laboratories in Berlin focussing on information communication for older users. On graduation, Kate was selected to take part in Starter for 6, an enterprise training programme that supports up and coming creative entrepreneurs, and now runs a mentoring scheme for jewellers, vanilla ink. http://vanillaink.wordpress.com/whats-vanilla-ink/

This year, we have jewellers from Scotland to Chile joining the programme with projects ranging from how CAD/CAM impacts on the creative process to exploring how jewellery making can be used as a facilitation tool with adults with learning disabilities. There is also an opportunity this year for a student to work on developing a forensic jewellery identification system alongside our award winning Jewellery and Metalwork and world renowned Forensic Art Programme.

The graduates from the Master of Design course at Dundee demonstrate that seeing the world through the eyes of a jeweller has a value beyond the bench.

Programme Director, Hazel White graduated from Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the RCA. Her research and practice explores how craft can give meaning to digital objects.