SLA awards set for November

By Confidente Reporter

THE 2020 /2021 Shining Light (SLA) competition, which has existed in Namibia for 11 years, is set to take place in November.

The SLA competition has evolved over the past few years moving from a jewellery design competition to a youth skills enablement initiative focused on celebrating and capacitating jewellery design talent found in De Beers’ diamond producer countries in a sustainable way by creating opportunities for designers through high-level exposure to the retail segment within the diamond value chain.

The competition is open to students from De Beers Group’s diamond producing partner countries such as Namibia, Botswana, Canada and South Africa, who are between the ages of 18 and 35 and who could be currently enrolled in a jewellery design and manufacturing programme, or graduates from one of the related programmes or simply talented freelance designers.

From previous competitions, the judges have reiterated that there is no right or wrong interpretation of the theme and that jewellery design, as an art, provides leeway for its diverse application.

The 2020/2021 SLA competition was launched on December 1 2020 and was open for entries since January before entries closed on April 30.

Three awardees/winners will be selected from each country.

SLA gives the winning entry access to tuition in Milan’s Politecnico which has been recognised as the number one university in Italy, the third in training in Europe and the fifth best in the world for Art and Design, having moved up one place since last year.

The level of academic quality which the winner receives is on par with that which is held as a benchmark by the De Beers Group Designers Initiative (DBGDI), which incorporates SLA.