Developing vocational practice in the jewelry sector through the incubation of a new ‘project-object’



It is much easier to establish national schemes like the KTS in industrial sectors such as
engineering, finance, pharmaceuticals which are characterised by, on the one hand, a mix of
multinational and large-scale national companies; and, on the other hand, the ‘traditional
value chain’ of partnerships and strategic alliances within firms (Porter, 1990). The long-
standing relationship between higher education and the engineering, finance and
pharmaceutical industries makes it relatively easy to persuade companies to participate in
such schemes.

The jewelry industry, which is part of the creative and cultural sector, presents a very
different kind of challenge. Much of this sector depends upon a value network of
‘horizontal’ collaboration between small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and
freelancers who create new products and services and ‘vertical’ collaboration between large
firms who act as suppliers and distributors (Bilton, 2006, p. 54). This generates a very
different pattern of economic activity based on ‘local ties’ where SMEs and freelancers are
committed to the creation of new jewelry products and the larger firms are concerned with
their manufacture and distribution. Government intervention in such contexts, if it occurs,
is difficult because policy measures rarely articulate with the actual needs of the relatively
invisible SMEs and/or local agencies that serve the needs of jewelry industry.

One of the most effective strategies for fostering education-industry collaboration in the
creative and cultural sector is to work through ‘intermediary agencies’ (Guile & Okumoto,
forthcoming). They are the range of local private and/or public sector organizations that act
as catalysts to bring SMEs, freelancers and networks together to forge partnerships. They
can include amongst others: local council’s departments of economic development and
social regeneration, sector-specific-funded agencies with a remit for brokering cross-
sectoral partnerships, and SMEs who specialize in project development. The next section
describes the work of a number of intermediary agencies and the work placement scheme
that they established.

3.2. Birmingham City Council’s Design Work Placement Project

Birmingham City Council (2007) has identified ‘inclusive economic regeneration’ as one of
city’s key agendas. Particular emphasis has been placed on increasing the number of the
‘under-represented’ sections of the community in the labour market. In order to engage with
the invisible infrastructure of the creative and cultural sector in the city, the City Council
established a Creative Team (CT) within the Department of Economic Development. The
CT’s role was to broker partnerships within the sector to test and promote new means of
combating discrimination and fostering economic development, and to identify sources of
funding to realize such partnerships aims and ambitions (BCC, 2007).

Birmingham’s Jewelry Quarter was one of the priority areas identified in BCC’s Creative
City Report
(BCC, 2003) because although the jewelry industry had historically been a
mainstay of the local economy, it was for a number of reasons now in decline. They can be
summarised as follows:



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