We live in turbulent times. The world is rapidly changing and we are forced to rethink and recalibrate our outlook and role as individuals within this more diverse and culturally complex community. In responding to these changes and attitudes we have shifted the curriculum emphasis from a purely object-centred focus to a wider scope questioning and exploring issues centred on the human condition. We believe in the power of material and its potential to express ideas and provide solutions to emerging needs.

Through our projects and curriculum we encourage an open-minded and flexible approach for deep thinking and nurturing intellectual and creative skills directed at understanding and pushing forward jewellery and objects of human making. It is important to us that students challenge and question norms and conventions, take a personal position and are able to interrogate the role and purpose of objects and adornment today.

The growing importance and interdisciplinary character of our distinctive discipline within material culture gives the applied arts an added vibrancy and relevance. With the formation of the School of Material, of which GSM&J is part, this facet has been enhanced further. We believe that the physical act of making has an essential role to play in an increasingly virtual world, but we also embrace digital technologies and the virtual, and believe that creating a dialogue between these worlds provides the applied arts with one of its most fertile testing grounds at this time.

Ultimately we strongly believe that an art school is ‘a place to do crazy things like throw beans at a wall’, as the artist Martin Creed puts it, and through doing this come to understand who we are, or what we want to be – and why.

Download GSM&J Programme Information Pack (PDF)

+44 (0)20 7590 4262
gsmj@rca.ac.uk

Open Days are held at the College between October and January of each academic year, to enable applicants to explore teaching programmes and meet staff and students.