Ethical Making @ The Goldsmiths' Centre
The Goldsmiths’ Centre is an educational charity dedicated to improving the skills and shaping the careers of jewellers, silversmiths and people working in the precious metal industry. It joined the Ethical Making Pledge in 2022, as we expanded to include educational institutions across the UK. We spoke with the Goldsmiths’ Centre’s Ambassadors Theo Salanson and Ella Rothing, whilst they were taking part in a year-long training course for 16 to 19 year olds, the Foundation Programme, to find out what they have been working on over the last year.
Within your workshop, what collective efforts towards more ethical/sustainable/responsible practice have been made this year?
As sustainability ambassadors we attended meetings and joined discussions with others in our trade in all aspects of ethical, sustainable and responsible practices. Our new awareness has triggered conversations and action with our fellow students in our workshop on the Goldsmiths’ Centre’s Foundation Programme. This year we have introduced multiple things to try and sustain an ethical practice. For example, as ambassadors we’ve made an effort to save energy use, by simply making sure all lights are turned off before we leave the classroom. We are aiming to have LED lights in all workshops. Following this, we are looking to get recycling bins all around the buildings, as well as already having base ferrous metal and floor sweepings bins, which everyone makes a strong effort to use daily. As we work with precious metals we have learnt the importance of using your metal in the most ethical way possible. On top of the bins we collect our silver lemmel. A simple change of installing microfibre cloths at each bench has cut down on the amount of blue towel that was used to dry our work.
How has your course integrated themes of ethical making into the curriculum?
All practises we are currently doing have been taught by the course leaders: from the beginning of the year, we have a lecture on sustainability and what it means in a workshop and its importance. The use of our three bins are taught in the workshop at the beginning of the course. Throughout the year we have a sustainablility lesson in the workshop where we’re taught to melt our lemmel and silver scraps back into wire and sheet for our own future workshops. Our lecture and discussion on ethical sourcing has highlighted how important it is for us to question and make sure that the sources of our materials, metal and stones and question where they come from to ensure that they are produced with as little negative impact to ourselves, others or our environment.
Have you (or any of your classmates’) addressed themes of ethical making within your creative practice?
When we set our main goals for what we wanted to achieve this year we tried to make sure the whole group had a say of what they thought was important and their ideas. We’ve had discussions after every ambassador meeting to discuss what we are thinking of doing.
What progress do you envision your course making over the coming year?
Further plans have been discussed with our course leaders for a tool TLC session, where we can learn how to look after and maintain our tools so they will last us a lifetime. We have taken the opportunity while working in other people’s workshops to learn how they positively approach issues and in one work experience setting we have recommended and put in place a change of safety pickle, barrel polishing compound and ultrasonic solutions as well as sourcing recycled materials and starting changes to the packaging used.
How has being an Ethical Making Ambassador changed your learning and practice?
The exposure gained as ambassadors to the differing ecological issues has given us an important understanding to the differing issues challenging our trade and the changes still needed for its future and has given us the underlying aim to practice in the most ethical, sustainable and responsible way possible.