A group of UW-Madison students are participating in a nationwide project aimed at creating beautiful pieces of jewelry, using sustainable and ethical practices.
The Radical Jewelry Makeover draws attention to the fact that jewelry is often sourced from sacred land and developing countries in ways that exploit both the land and the people living on it.
“Every single piece that is used in jewelry has to come from the earth, and is it extracted from the earth wisely, or is it done haphazardly with no thought to mankind and what is happening to each of us in this world?” said Florence Hardymon, a donor to the project in a promotional video.
The Radical Jewelry Makeover is a project of the nonprofit Ethical Metalsmiths, and it relies on donors like Hardymon for used pieces of jewelry in order to create entirely new pieces from the repurposed materials.
The project was created by Susie Ganch, a UW-Madison graduate and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007. This is the first year it has come to the UW-Madison campus.