Statement on the Closure of Craft Courses at Edinburgh College of Art

Alchemy: Goldsmiths Scotland CIC was founded in spring 2026 to celebrate and help nurture the very skills the University of Edinburgh is planning to axe.

The University has failed to notice the significant rise of interest in acquiring hand skills, not least among the young. In an increasingly digital world, many are choosing to make by hand and use analogue techniques. The same positive change of direction is equally visible in areas such as literature and photography. 

The University now plans to dispense with, among others, its Jewellery and Silversmithing undergraduate degree course: one of Scotland’s most respected making programmes, with a worldwide reputation for excellence and innovation, built over decades. Where previous generations of Scotland’s young people benefited from an inspiring range of options to acquire demanding hand skills, today’s young creatives already have so few options in their own home country. 

Alchemy: Goldsmiths Scotland recognises there can be no meaningful design without an understanding of making and how materials behave. This applies in all fields, from fashion to architecture. In jewellery and silversmithing, as in other crafts, such tacit knowledge can only be built through countless hours at the bench. This applies equally to the use of traditional techniques and cutting-edge technology. There are no short cuts.

Edinburgh College of Art has produced, and continues to produce, exceptionally skilled jewellery and silversmithing graduates with transferable skills applicable well beyond the jewellery industry. Their hours at the bench have nurtured essential skills such as lateral thinking and problem solving. The students have been taught by generations of inspiring leaders who have passed on their own skills directly, face to face, as makers have done over millennia. In addition, ECA provides superb making facilities, only recently upgraded. The direct transfer of skills, and the provision of specialist equipment and tools, once lost, can never be replaced. 

Jewellery and silversmithing education in Scotland has always punched far above its weight both in UK and international terms, but its reputation will sharply diminish with the closure of specialist centres of excellence like that at ECA. Alchemy strongly believes the plan to close such departments is both short sighted and economically nonsensical. We believe our future depends on those who know how to make.

The news of the closure of ECA’s undergraduate Jewellery and Silversmithing programme is being received with disbelief worldwide. If allowed to proceed, this would not only be an immense loss to Edinburgh. It would also be an irrecoverable reputational loss for Scotland, recognised for so long for the quality of its makers, its enviable material resources and its distinctive cultural identity. As others have pointed out, there will be consequences for Scottish culture that are almost impossible to mitigate, along with an enormous loss for the wider UK’s cultural landscape.

Alchemy notes with dismay that the University is also closing its highly respected courses in Textiles and Performance Costume, as well as many other courses in the humanities. We stand in support of the students, staff and technicians of ECA, as well as all artists and the wider creative community affected by these devastating proposals.

Alongside Craft Scotland and numerous other arts organisations at home and abroad, we call on the University of Edinburgh to reverse these planned closures immediately.