The finished Temporary Programme, Challenging Jewellery, focused on building a persuasive collective. One that could be defined as both a corporate association and a movement, driven by a common interest in ‘team spirit’ and the relevance of the silent side of the beauty. The initiative was driven and operated by way of a fully-functioning company structure.

This process facilitated the study of current notions of human need focused on objects. Further investigation also took place in fields that need aesthetic support in order to allow ‘healing’; this may for example include employing aspects of jewellery in medical and political areas.

Individual research and practices continuously interacted with the administrative, productive and communicative tasks that everyone in the team agreed to perform. Ideally the collective that was formed over the course of the programme will naturally extend into a continued existence and significance beyond its set timeframe of two years.

Tutors, guests and participants formed a mix that was characterised by its potential to explore while paying attention to the small, silent and private, the human handling, and the careful treatment of material thoughts, values and behaviours.

The Temporary Programme challenged the subject of jewellery on a fundamental level – how it relates to our present time. The approach represented an attempt to think big on a small scale, and presumed an ability to understand ‘micro-working’. The input for Challenging Jewellery was based on intergenerational dialogue. An advisory board, comprising four key figures in the realm of jewellery and design, ensured this was done in a solid cooperation with the relevant fields. The visiting tutors and guests – varying from theoreticians and curators to contemporary architects, designers and artists – guaranteed a continuous renewal of viewpoints on and insights into a discipline manifest in traditions, historical design and theoretical connotations.

Like the previous Temporary Programmes – Material Utopias, Materialisation in Art & Design, Fashion Matters, and the current programme, Radical Cut-Up – Challenging Jewellery worked together with the Gerrit Rietveld Academie BA departments and workshops, such as Ceramics, Glass, Textile, CadCam, Wood, Metal and Photography.