Location

Farnham

Start date

Sept 2026, Sept 2027

Duration

3 years full-time

UCAS logo

UCAS codes

Course: W271
Institution: C93

+1

Foundation year

Optional extra year of study

+1

Placement year

Optional extra year of study

Entry requirements

Check qualifications

Jewellery & Silversmithing at UCA

Fine metal makers learn through heat, pressure and patience. They find their ideas at the bench, not just on the page. UCA’s BA (Hons) Jewellery & Silversmithing degree about learning through hand-making objects within a community of makers.

World-class craft facilities

Our workshops are some of the country’s best. Forty individual benches, each with gas torches, soldering stations and ventilation. A dedicated casting suite, chemical room, polishing equipment, and a soundproofed hammer room. Beyond metals, you have access to wood, ceramics, glass, digital fabrication, and printmaking – giving you the freedom to push your practice wherever your ideas want to take you.

A making culture, not a design brief

Everything here is hands-on, you’ll develop through experimentation, iteration, and the kind of skills that only come from hours at the bench. You'll learn traditional metalworking alongside emerging techniques, building fluency across every process. We call it thinking through making, and it's at the heart of everything we do.

Small cohorts and a real craft community

With small groups in big workshops, you'll be known by your tutors, your technicians, and your peers. Our open-plan workshops foster a studio culture where skills are shared, feedback is generous, and creative confidence grows over time. It's a close, supportive environment where you can take risks, experiment boldly, and find your own direction without pressure to conform.

Industry exposure from day one

Professional practice is woven through every year. You'll work on live briefs with partners like New Ashgate Gallery, enter national competitions such as the Goldsmiths' Craft & Design Council Awards and the British Art Medal Society prize, and build a professional portfolio and network long before you graduate.

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Discover the stories of our Crafts students

What you'll study

The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

Maker + Material: 30 credits
In this first module you will be introduced to fundamental making skills and material knowledge specific to the discipline. You will learn core techniques, processes, and material properties through hands-on learning, experimentation, and critical reflection. Emphasis is placed on developing your confidence in practical skills while beginning to understand how your material choices shape creative outcomes.

Career Catalyst: Skills & Capability: 30 credits
This module focuses on building creative, technical and digital capability aligned to professional standards. You develop transferable skills through practical projects, feedback and reflection, strengthening professional literacy and confidence. This module prepares you to apply your skills effectively across disciplines, laying the foundations for collaboration, industry engagement and complex creative challenges.

Process + Potential: 30 credits
You will be introduced to production-led approaches to craft practice, focusing on repetition, duplication, and variation as tools for iterative design. You will develop technical skills, deepen material understanding, and embed sustainability and ethical awareness into your workflows. Through thematic research and experimentation, you will explore how production methods shape ideas and outcomes, planning and managing resources to create resolved artefacts that communicate concepts visually and materially.

Hybrid Practices: 30 credits
In this module you will develop your creative practice through experimentation with analogue, digital, and hybrid techniques. You will extend skills and ideas developed elsewhere in the course by applying them to new material, technical, or contextual situations, exploring how tools, processes, and formats shape creative outcomes. Through studio-based experimentation, you will test and iterate work across physical, digital, spatial, and/or screen-based approaches, with an emphasis on learning through doing, adaptation, and reflection rather than producing resolved outcomes. The module encourages consideration of context, audience, and presentation, alongside ethical, sustainable, and inclusive creative decision-making, supporting progression into more independent practice.

Material Matters: 30 credits
This module positions material research as a core skill in contemporary craft. You will investigate physical properties, cultural significance, and sustainable potential through making and critical inquiry. Emphasis is placed on experimentation, risk- taking, and the productive role of failure, as you progress toward resolved artefacts with conceptual and technical ambition. Through iterative practice and reflection, you will develop an informed, ethically aware approach to material selection and use, culminating in a coherent body of work.

Career Catalyst: Communities & Influence: 30 credits
This module emphasises collaboration, participation and real-world impact. Working with audiences, communities and professional contexts through live briefs, projects and engagement opportunities. This module develops professional agency, teamwork and networks, helping you understand how creative practice creates value, influence and opportunity within industry, civic and global contexts.

Audience + Identity: 30 credits
You are supported as an emerging maker to define and propose your individual creative direction and position your practice within relevant audiences and contexts. You will develop a coherent body of resolved practical work through research, design development, and critical reflection. Building on your prior learning, you will iteratively prototype and test ideas, producing artefacts that demonstrate conceptual clarity, technical resolution, and contextual awareness. Through reflective writing, you will articulate the relevance of your practice within the wider field.

Festival: 30 credits
This is the module that prepares you for professional practice through the planning and/or delivery of public-facing creative work, applying critical analysis, audience engagement and sustainable principles to help define and test your creative practice.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Creative Research: 30 credits
In this module you are challenged to investigate questions or themes through advanced, critical research and/or practice, communicate your findings effectively and evaluate how they shape your own, distinctive creative work.

Career Catalyst: Futures & Direction: 30 credits
This module supports your transition beyond graduation by focusing on professional identity, positioning and future direction. Consolidating learning through portfolio development, research and career planning you will prepare for employment, freelance practice or further study. The module develops autonomy, confidence and resilience, equipping you to navigate and shape your future professional pathways.

Major Project: 60 credits
This is the module that brings together the knowledge, skills and behaviours you have learned to develop research-informed, critical and sustainable work that defines your practice and readiness for next steps after graduation.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Integrated foundation year

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year one

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year two

  • Independent study: 74%
  • Scheduled teaching: 26%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year three

  • Independent study: 76%
  • Scheduled teaching: 24%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Professional placement or International year (if undertaken)

  • Independent study: 98%
  • Scheduled teaching: 2%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 100%

Please note: these details are for 2026 entry and could be subject to change for other years of entry.

Course specifications

Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.

Upcoming webinars

We offer a range of webinars throughout the year that you may be interested in.

You can also view recordings of all previous sessions through the UCA webinar archive.


Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790
  • BA course: £9,790

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790(see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,790 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £18,000
  • BA course: £18,000

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2026 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,490. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of the Course Information Document for more details of the costs you may incur. 

Find out what's included in your tuition fees.

Jewellery degree career opportunities

We enjoy close links with a range of professional organisations who are able to benefit our students in the form of bursaries, awards, seminars and competitions. These include:

  • Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
  • Tatty Devine
  • British Art Medal Society

As well as overseas opportunities with Study Abroad placements or the additional International Year of study as an option, a European study trip is organised each year and is open to all year groups.

Our graduates have progressed to a variety of professional roles, including:

  • Designer-makers
  • Designing
  • Working for jewellery companies
  • Marketing
  • Retail
  • Teaching

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.


Anita Loh with Peter Crump

What our Jewellery & Silversmithing students say

“UCA will always be the place where my jewellery journey began. The facilities and technical staff deepened my knowledge of the making process and skills in the industry. I have also been introduced to many new experiences and lovely people who have helped me with my design process."

Read Anita's story Chat to UCA students

Jewellery & Silversmithing entry requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see your portfolio, please see the portfolio requirements section for more details.

Select your country to find the equivalent requirements

Portfolio requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the course with the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see a portfolio.

  • UK applicants: We will invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person.
  • International applicants: We will ask you to submit an online portfolio. 

In your portfolio we’re looking for 12 to 20 examples of your current work, that showcase your level and range of achievements. 

Please see the Jewellery & Silversmithing BA (Hons) portfolio requirements and read our advice on creating a strong jewellery portfolio.

UCAS applicants should also check our UCAS personal statement guide for jewellery applicants.

Full portfolio requirements and advice

Apply to BA (Hons) Jewellery & Silversmithing

Please use the following fields to help select the right application link for you:

UCAS codes

  • UCA institution code: C93
  • Three year degree: W271
  • Plus professional practice year: W272
  • Plus integrated foundation year: W27A
  • Plus integrated foundation year and professional practice year: W27B

BA (Hons) Jewellery & Silversmithing key statistics

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