Bling Bling Tradition is a special edition of Arts-ED’s flagship Cultural Heritage Education Programme (CHEP), where artist-facilitators use the arts as a tool to encourage cultural transmission between youths and the community.

For this edition, Arts-ED collaborates with Universiti Sains Malaysia’s School of The Arts Graphic Communication Department to connect second-year degree students with the cultural heritage of gold jewellery through research and Place-based Learning alongside their regular academic study in the field of graphic design and communication.

The program is planned, designed, and conducted by cultural heritage experts, artist-facilitators, and assistant facilitators trained in the Engaged Arts Model in collaboration with university academics. Throughout the program, the students will research the elements of gold in their respective communities and present their findings using selected core arts media.

Program objectives

• Strengthen youths’ appreciation of local cultural heritage, sense of place, and cultural identity;

• Enhance youths’ critical, creative and aesthetic capacity, as well as their communication skills; and

• Enable youths to explore their own identity while acquiring mutual respect for diverse communities, culture,s and arts.

Through the study of the history and heritage value of the gold jewellery industry and trade, the program cultivates an appreciation of cultural exchange, hybridization, and evolution in the creation of new norms and forms in heritage gold jewellery. The learning process which involves research and investigations builds understanding and knowledge in the cultural heritage of gold, thus strengthening the sense of place and cultural identity of the participants in the program.

A key component of the project is to encourage inter-group dialogue and exchange among the participants. Such dialogues and exchanges are incorporated into project activities, whether in an implicit or explicit manner, to foster mutual understanding and respect for diversity.

Building on the knowledge gained with respect to the cultural and heritage forms and values connected to a gold jeweller, participants will develop visual campaigns to showcase the significance and cultural value of the gold jewellery industry - its past, present, and future, at the end of the program.

Bling-Bling Tradition: Youths Campaign Showcase

At the end of the programme, the students are tasked to create a campaign to demonstrate their findings and learnings from their place-based research and site excursions.

Click HERE to view the campaigns by the 17 student groups from USM Graphic Communication Department.

In this virtual showcase, students will share their discoveries and learning journey with the Bling Bling Tradition program, and present their interactive campaigns developed based on the different functions and uses of gold jewellery.

Join us to find out how youths can bring awareness to an aging industry to preserve the craftsmanship, heritage, and cultural value of gold jewellery in our community.

Interested? Register here before 23rd February 2022!

For further inquiries, please email radziah.artsed@gmail.com

This programme is supported by the International Relief Fund 2021 through Goethe-Institut Malaysia and organised in collaboration with School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia