The internationally renowned School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University is the largest in Europe, with unrivalled facilities and expertise to study and develop a career.
Located across sites at the heart of Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter, the original school on Vittoria Street was founded in 1890. Today the Venetian Gothic facade conceals a contemporary award-winning environment that includes multiple jewelry studios, a horology suite, specialist lower ground floor technical workshops, the CAD CAM Technical Hub & Research Centre, and a gallery. The Carver Street building houses the gemology students and business jewelry course and is also home to the Birmingham Assay Office.
The program covers all aspects of jewelry, silversmithing, horology, gemology, and business management, working with a wide variety of materials including precious and nonprecious metals, gemstones, plastics, textiles, wood, and other experimental materials. Students also benefit from an enviable range of cutting-edge equipment and technology used in today’s industry, including electroforming, vacuum casting, and CAD/CAM 3D printing, sintering, and cutting, to name but a few.
Graduating students have a wide spectrum of employability, including self-employment as designer/makers setting up their own studios or employment for larger companies, including the Assay Office, Tiffany’s, Tag Heuer, Cartier, and De Beers.
Vittoria Street Gallery
Located in the heart of Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter, the Vittoria Street Gallery is a unique exhibition venue situated within the School of Jewellery. With its established reputation for education and an international research center, the School of Jewellery offers a prime location for the gallery.
The gallery hosts a dynamic program of exhibitions and events that spans the breadth of the jewelry discipline and other associated art and design practices. It showcases a wide variety of creative practice by artists, educators, researchers, and practitioners, spanning a range of projects from commercial to contemporary, from handcrafted to digital technologies, and across experimental thinking, new ideas, technical innovation, and skilled craftsmanship, all of which seek to celebrate creative endeavor.
RECENT GRADUATES: If you recently received a degree–BA, BFA, MA, or MFA–from this university, everything you need to know to upload your graduate portfolio can be found at this link.
