The Problem

The UK has a long-standing reputation of producing top-quality jewellery designers for companines scattered all over the USA and Europe. But while their creativity remains undiminished by globalisation, industry competitiveness is suffering.

The apprenticeships in the UK Jewellery trade have dwindled to nearly none. The Jewellery NVQ has disappeared. The only places in the UK providing professional skills training right now are art schools, and technical skills have never been their primary focus. This ultimately leaves a technical and practical gap between new graduates and the UK trade at large.

Technology Training for the Jewellery Industry

Technical training is the way forward. Jewellery industries in countries all over the world are moving to update their manufacturing facilities as well as their design facilities with the latest in technology.

Holts Academy is in an unusual position of being the only dedicated Jewellery trade school in the UK that offers CAD/CAM instruction in all the major Jewellery CAD software packages (through partnership with H3-D) alongside traditional training in design, fabrication, lapidary, and gemology. Already we have formed a collaboration with Metropolitan Works and the Jewellery Innovation Center at UCE Birmingham to provide advisory and trade events to acquaint the industry with recent developments in technology. But I feel we can do more to provide a greater confidence in the labour force we train at our academy.

The Proposed Solution

For this reason, H3-D has devoted itself to creating Certified CAD Training Programmes. By working together with the software developers, I would like to formulate teaching curricula that are approved and endorsed by each software company for use in instructing new CAD designers for the jewellery trade. I believe this formal endorsement from the makers of the software companies themselves will give greater confidence to jewellery company owners in selecting new workers or training existing ones, helping to set a standard of skill for this new field.