Shining light awards shift focus
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday April 30, 2015 16:48
Addressing the media yesterday, Vice President Beneficiation Kevin Goodrem said this year’s competition would take a new turn while still discovering and showcasing the talent of young jewellery designers to the world.
“The competition will give participants the opportunity not to only showcase their talent, but receive valuable business development skills in the areas of jewellery design, jewellery manufacturing, sales and marketing and consumer demands,” he explained.
Twelve designs will be picked from three participating countries that include Botswana, South Africa and Namibia.
Four designs will be picked from each country for the grand finale, which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The pieces will be showcased in 3D technology and will be exhibited in these three countries.
“The winner will get an opportunity to go to Milan for a year to receive training with our innovative, Forevermark design team. Position two and three will spend three months.
“This will expose and enhance their skills in jewellery design..”
Goodrem also added that, “the designs will be judged by an expert panel of judges who will be looking at the brief.
“Expectations are that they want something that is commercial; people have to look at it and adore it, they should want to own it. The jewellery also has to be aligned with the theme, understand what really it means,” said Goodrem. The competition is open to students from Oodi College, University of Botswana, Botho University and Limkokwing as well as those who have completed their studies at a tertiary institution in the past two years.
This year’s competition theme is “The Promise is aligned to our Forevermark promise”, which has been translated to that all our diamonds are beautiful, rare and responsibly sourced.“The shift in focus encourages designers to move away from creating extravagant jewellery pieces to creating commercially viable jewellery. “The competition has moved from discovering pure design talent to encouraging participants to not only showcase their talent, but their business skills including cost management and return on investment.”
Banyana Mpete emerged last year’s winner and walked away with P50,000.The competition was initially conceived as a design competition with a vision of showcasing the wealth of talent from South Africa, Botswana and Namibia to the world by creating a design platform and providing opportunities for designers to bring their designs to life by working with jewellery manufacturers to develop these unique pieces.