I will be speaking at an upcoming event as part of the inaugural Sydney Craft Week – Craft Up Late and Panel Discussion
The Australian Design Centre will be open until 8pm on Wednesday 11 October as part of Sydney Craft Week’s Craft Up Late program. Come to the gallery, where you can see the exhibitions on show, have a drink and listen to the panel discussion: Sydney – A City on the Make, presented by Garland magazine and Australian Design Centre. Speakers include Kevin Murray from Garland who will moderate the panel, Sydney jeweller Bridget Kennedy from Studio 20/17 and Nadeena Dixon, a Wiradjuri/Yuin/Dharug Sydney-based textile artist.
When: Wednesday 11 October, 6-8pm
Where: Australian Design Centre
Free event, booking required.

With the recent sad news of the closure at the end of this year of the jewellery department at M.I.T  Auckland, it seems timely to emphasise the importance of supporting our local Australian and New Zealand artists and creative arts scene. Despite a 50 year strong history and a plethora of accomplished graduates, M.I.T. was deemed not profitable enough to continue. Similarly in Australia, in recent years the contemporary jewellery community has been devastated with galleries and education facilities closing down or drastically downsizing.  This makes it more vital than ever before to support our local makers and indeed our local supply companies.  As makers, it’s tempting to buy supplies overseas for a ‘cheaper’ price but we do pay an ultimate cost. The money spent stays overseas and our local suppliers eventually go out of business taking with them the expertise that can only be imparted through local interaction and conversation. The same can be said for us as art/craft consumers, and as gallerists. While overseas artists might appear to add a certain cache to a gallery, if we don’t make it a priority to support our local makers, either through sheer hard work and promotion, or by putting our dollar where it counts, the end result will be a huge loss of creativity on our local shores and the demise of our cultural originality.

Australian and New Zealand makers have a unique perspective and it is imperative that we foster this expression.  Encouragingly, a new initiative has this aim at The Australian Design Centre under the helm of the formidable Lisa Cahill. ADC is at the forefront of re-establishing support and generating enthusiasm for contemporary crafts in NSW with the establishment of an annual Sydney Craft Week, the inaugural event being on 6-15 October, 2017. I encourage you to get out and about during this time to see what wonderful creativity exists in our gorgeous city. I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about Sydney’s craft culture on Wed 11^th October. If you’d like to continue the conversation please join me at ADC by booking at https://australiandesigncentre.com/latestnews/australian-design-centre-events/

I’m proud to say that Studio 20/17 Project Space is the only contemporary jewellery gallery in Sydney choosing to focus solely on representing and supporting  Australian and New Zealand contemporary jewellery artists in both a retail and exhibition environment.

You DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE to this world. Remember, the choice you make for every dollar you spend or every task in which you invest time and energy is a vote for the type of world you want.
Choose to support your local artist over the alternatives and keep creativity alive in our region.  – Bridget x.

Our next pop-up Repair Cafe is on soon! Bring along a broken item of costume jewellery and with the help of volunteers from the Repair Cafe Sydney North, we’ll repair it together at the free pop-up Jewellery Repair Cafe at Studio 20/17 Project Space, 53 Ridge Street, North Sydney.

You’ll have the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge to make simple repairs yourself whilst being guided through the process. Please note that not all items may be able to be fixed. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee, or lend a hand with someone else’s repair job.

Spaces are limited.  Time – 2:30 – 4pm. Book Thursday 27th July 2017

If you can’t make it to this one, there’s always our regular Repair Cafe Sydney North event, on the 1st and 2nd Sundays of the month where items such as clothing, jewellery, furniture, shoes & small appliances are repaired for free and kept out of landfill with the help of volunteers.

I’ve been neglecting this website for a while as life’s been so full of other things. Studio 20/17 Project Space has been open in North Sydney for a few months now and The Repair Cafe is in full swing. We’ve even had a couple of pop-up jewellery repair cafes in North Sydney. I’m now doing a little teaching at UNSWAD and enjoying more and more work remaking jewellery for people.

On 31st May 6-8pm at the Australian Design Centre, I’m looking forward to speaking at an industry focused panel discussion for designers, makers and thinkers to contemplate the viability of transformative repair. Is transformative repair a response to problems of obsolescence and waste in product design? Does it have the potential to create an emergent service market for design and arts professionals? Consider these questions and many more – hosted by ABC Sydney’s Simon Marnie with Object Therapy curator and project designer, Guy Keulemans and featuring ‘Object Therapy’ designers, owners and special guests.