My thoughts and memories on being a UK finalist for the World Skills UK Fine Jewellery Competition 2017...
The World Skills Show is held at the NEC Birmingham, over 600 trainees and apprentices of hundreds of trades come together to do live competitions and inspire those looking a for a prospective career.
The Heats
“Both the heats and the final competition are timed and under silent conditions, so there is a fair amount of pressure on you!”
The initial start of the competition starts with the heats, these are held in Birmingham and London for the fine jewellery making category, they're your first point of contact with the judges and give you a feel to what the final competition is going to be like.
Our Heats challenge was to make a small silver pendant from a technical drawing, from a small piece of sheet and tube. This gave you the chance to show off to the judges your soldering, finishing and metal management skills. Both the heats and the final competition are timed and under silent conditions, so there is a fair amount of pressure on you!
The Finals
After the heats the judges whittle us down to 8 competitors to represent Fine Jewellery at World Skills UK, I felt immensely proud to get to this point and it instilled lot of confidence in me and my skills.
The final competition is stretched out over three days, with different elements of the piece to be made each day, our final piece to make was much harder than that of the heats and the environment of the competition is completely different. During the finals students, apprentices and the general public can come to watch you and with the NEC getting over 8000 visitors just for World Skills, it can get fairly noisy!
The piece we made for the final competition (shown below) was a silver pendant with a bail, gallery wire, a jour cutting back holes and 2 basket settings. It was a challenging piece with so many different elements and a harsh time restraint but the trill of the competition made it all worth it!
Pendant for the Final Competition
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