Overview
Dedicated and diverse
Key details
- 180 credits
- 1 year programme
- Full-time study
School or Centre
Next open day
- 12 Apr 2023
- Book or view all open days
Application deadline
- Still accepting applications
On our programme, we seek to understand the world through materials.
The Jewellery & Metal programme seeks to unpick the relationship between people and things, pushing beyond the subject-object binary JaM students explore the multiple ways we are entrapped and enthralled by the complex entanglement of the material and immaterial worlds. Through emergent acts of making, JaM believes we can shed new light on these complex and essential relationships, revealing great depths in our understanding of, and being in, the world.
As artists and designers, we engage with the making process as an essential way of materialising ideas, thoughts, feelings, offering a space for innovative and radical new ways of approaching jewellery, objects, and metal. We are responsive to the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape, drawing on history and technology in nurturing intellectual and creative skills directed at understanding and pushing forward jewellery and objects of human making. The rich and extensive bodies of knowledge associated with jewellery and metal object-making underpin an approach that is outward-looking and open to the wider discourse of “things” connected to contemporary life. Students can expect to work with, and through, a vast array of material possibilities, exploring a multiplicity of possible narratives.
Still accepting applications for 2023 entry. See the Eligibility and key dates webpage for round 3 details.
Explore further
Visit 2022.rca.ac.uk to view graduate work by our students.
Catch the replays from our November 2022 online Open Day.
Gallery
Staff
Facilities
The School of Arts & Humanities is located across our Battersea and Kensington sites.
View all facilitiesAll full-time students on fine or applied arts programmes are provided with studios or workspace, and access to specialist workshops. There are a number of bookable seminar and project spaces across the site available to all Arts & Humanities students.
Our alumni
Our alumni form an international network of creative individuals who have shaped and continue to shape the world. Click on each name to find out more.
More details on what you'll study.
Find out what you'll cover in this programme.
What you'll cover
How will I learn?
Through tutorials, critique, workshops, and lectures students are encouraged to challenge traditional perceptions and perceived hierarchies, as well as to question and exploit both digital and analogue realities. Seminar and group discussion form an essential part of the programme as we believe that the cross fertilisation of ideas alongside staff and peer feedback is essential to postgraduate learning and interdisciplinary thinking.
Programme structure
The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.
Term 1
The Interrogating Your Practice and Deconstructing Assumptions unit, focuses on developing analytical tools for deconstructing and critiquing one’s own practice and previous methods/approaches as well as providing new contexts and directions for their work. Emphasis is placed on inviting new thoughts and progressive ideas through which to develop a jewellery, object, or metal practice. The development of personal and investigative research methods are key, and are developed and discussed throughout the term.
Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit. See below for more details.
Term 2
Developing Your Voice and Situating a Practice focuses on developing new techniques, processes, lines of enquiry through a material-led, material-transformational practice as well as setting forth your suitable career context where students are asked to frame their practice within a chosen professional context within art and design. Research developments and lines of enquiry formulated in Unit 1 will act as a background for the production of a body of work
In term 2 all School of Arts & Humanities students will participate in the Urgency of the Arts, School-wide unit. Through this unit we ask: what does arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The unit introduces students to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and practices relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the Arts & Humanities. The delivery is devised to help you identify and query your own practices and disciplinary assumptions through encounters with others and within the various practices undertaken by students in the School, and to raise awareness around contemporary concerns. You will be supported in understanding the ramifications of your own work and practice within a broad cultural context, and to recognise its many potentially unintended readings and consequences.
Term 3
The Independent Research Project offers a point of synthesis through exhibition, critical reflection and portfolio production. Contracted and visiting staff from the programme support students to acquire advanced understanding of practice-led methodologies, critical reflection, production and presentation. Here, the IP supports students with the specific conceptual and material demands of exhibiting and sharing their work and uses this to prepare them for the diverse professional practices of contemporary art and design.
AcrossRCA
Situated at the core of your RCA student experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College- wide AcrossRCA unit supports how you respond to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds by engaging you in a global creative network that draws on expertise within and beyond the institution. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for you to:
- make connections across disciplines
- think critically about your creative practice
- develop creative networks within and beyond the College
- generate innovative responses to complex problems
- reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts.
AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations from internationally acclaimed speakers that will encourage you to think beyond the discourses of art, architecture, communication, and design, and extend into other territories such as economics, ethics, science, engineering, medicine or astrophysics.
In interdisciplinary teams you will be challenged to use your intellect and imagination to respond to urgent contemporary themes, providing you with an opportunity to develop innovative and disruptive thinking, critically reflect on your responsibilities as a creative practitioner and demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world. This engagement with interdisciplinary perspectives and practices is designed both to complement your disciplinary studies and provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.
Requirements
What you need to know before you apply
Candidates are selected entirely on merit and applications are welcomed from all over the world. The selection process considers creativity, imagination and innovation as demonstrated in your portfolio, as well as your potential to benefit from the programme and to achieve high MA standards overall.
We seek to recruit students who are talented, enthusiastic, energetic, professionally minded, with an open and critical approach to design and making. You must possess a good undergraduate degree (or non-UK equivalent qualification) in metalwork, jewellery or a related subject, such as textiles, sculpture, architecture and industrial design. Your application should be supported by good, preferably academic, references and you should possess a range of practical skills. Equivalent professional experience or apprenticeships are also taken into account.
Applications may be considered from candidates without formal training and/or qualifications in other subjects, but you must clearly demonstrate an understanding of the subject area and potential to bring expertise and knowledge from another discipline that would contribute to the Jewellery & Metal group dynamic.
What's needed from you
Portfolio requirements
Jewellery & Metal is a dynamic programme which seeks to unpick the interactions of people and the material world. With this in mind, we would like to see your subjective analysis of the world around you within the practice you create. Highlight your particular interests and visions. We want to see what makes your practice unique and where the innovation lies within it. This can be material innovation, conceptual innovation, narrative innovation etc. We are keen to see portfolios from a range of backgrounds and our programme contains students from fine art, applied art and design disciplines.
Please submit up to five works or projects, showing three images for each, totalling a maximum of 15 images. Up to three short films are also suitable for submission within your portfolio. It is important that the work is clearly visible and the focus is on your outcomes/objects.
Please do not provide designed portfolio pages which distract or overwhelm the practice; do not highlight craft process unless it is of particularly innovative or experimental.
Video requirements
This video is your opportunity to tell us who you are as a creative individual. Tell us what drives your creative ambitions; what are your particular interests and how do these influence your practice. Please also take this opportunity to explain why you think Jewellery & Metal is the right programme for you to develop your practice, identity and ideas/philosophy. Self-direction is a key aspect of your learning within an MA programme at the RCA: please explain how you organise and coordinate your own practice.
Take this opportunity to discuss a specific project from your portfolio. Tell us what motivated the project and how you developed it from an early stage through to a final outcome. Explain how the project was successful and where it was not successful, and what did you learn from the process – we believe that honest critique of your own practice is essential to self-directed study and is important to showcase this within this video.
English-language requirements
If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country you will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic score of 6.5 with a 6.0 in the Test of Written English (TWE) and at least 5.5 in other skills. Students achieving a grade of at least 6.0, with a grade of 5.5 in the Test of Written English, may be eligible to take the College’s English for Academic Purposes course to enable them to reach the required standard.
You are exempt from this requirement if you have received a 2.1 degree or above from a university in a majority English-speaking nation within the last two years.
If you need a Student Visa to study at the RCA, you will also need to meet the Home Office’s minimum requirements for entry clearance.
Fees & funding
For this programme
Fees for new students
Fees for September 2023 entry on this programme are outlined below. From 2021 onward, EU students are classified as Overseas for tuition fee purposes.
Home
Overseas and EU
Deposit
New entrants to the College will be required to pay a non-refundable deposit in order to secure their place. This will be offset against the tuition fees.
Home
Overseas and EU
Progression discount
For alumni and students who have completed an RCA Graduate Diploma and progress onto an RCA Master's programme – MA, MA/MSc, MFA, MDes, MArch, MEd or MRes – within 10 years, a progression discount of £1,000 is available.
* Total cost is based on the assumption that the programme is completed in the timeframe stated in the programme details. Additional study time may incur additional charges.
Scholarships
Scholarships
Scholarships are awarded for a specific programme and entry point and cannot be deferred without consent from the academic Programme and scholarships panel.
House of Fraser Bursary
Supporting students on any MA programme from the UK (Preferably is a Scottish national), experiencing financial hardship.
Eligibility criteria: Financial hardship, Student preferably of Scottish origin
Eligible fee status: UK fee status, full-time
Value: £10,000
Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships
The Scholarship supports 21 UK MA, MRes and PhD students every year from across all RCA MA, MRes and PhD disciplines.
Eligibility criteria: Financial hardship, Students with Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, or mixed Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £21,000
The RCA Cost of Living Bursary
The RCA Cost of Living Bursary supports living costs for home students across all MA programmes.
Value: Bursaries of £5,000 each, for use towards living costs
Eligibility criteria: Financial hardship
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
The RCA Disabled Students Bursary
The RCA Disabled Students Bursary supports living costs for home students with a declared disability across all MA programmes, recognising the contribution that UK students with disabilities make to the RCA
Value: Bursaries of £6,000 each, for use towards living costs
Eligibility criteria: Students with a diagnosed physical or sensory disability, or specific learning difficulties.
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
The Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship (UK)
The Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship supports academic excellence by rewarding talented home applicants with the highest scoring portfolios on application to RCA, with a partial fee scholarship
Value: Scholarships of £2,500 each, to be offset against fees
Eligibility criteria: Academic excellence
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholarship
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholarship is aimed at international students applicants from selected countries and territories, and on selected programmes
Value: Scholarships of £3,500 each, to be offset against fees
Eligibility criteria: If oversubscribed, this bursary is awarded on academic merit or financial need.
Eligible fee status: International fee status, from: Canada, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, USA
The Vice Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship (International)
The Vice-Chancellor’s Achievement Scholarship - International supports academic excellence by rewarding talented applicants with the highest scoring portfolios on application to RCA at Round 1 and Round 2 of applications, with a partial fee scholarship.
Value: Scholarships of £2,500 each to be offset against fees
Eligibility criteria: Academic excellence
Eligible fee status: International fee status
More information
External funding
There are many funding sources, with some students securing scholarships and others saving money from working. It is impossible to list all the potential funding sources; however, the following information could be useful.
Payments
Tuition fees are due on the first day of the academic year and students are sent an invoice prior to beginning their studies. Payments can be made in advance, on registration or in two instalments.
Start your application
Change your life and be here in 2023. Applications now open.
The Royal College of Art welcomes applicants from all over the world.
Before you begin
Make sure you've read and understood the entrance requirements and key dates
More information about eligibility and key datesCheck you have all the information you need to apply.
Read our application process guideConsider attending an Open Day, or one of our portfolio or application advice sessions
See upcoming sessionsPlease note, all applications must be submitted by 12 noon on the given deadline.
Ask a question
Get in touch if you’d like to find out more or have any questions.
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