collect & donate

The donation drive is where it all begins. When RJM is hosted by an institution (universities, colleges, and art centers along with a gallery) a call-to-action donation drive asks the institution's local community to donate unwanted and broken jewelry to RJM, turning local people into miners as they dig into their jewelry boxes.

Even though it may seem like a small action, the donation drive is an integral part of RJM. It not only creates a way for unwanted jewelry to be put back to use in a valuable way, but it raises awareness of our habits of consumption and collecting. This important first step interrogates the jewelry industry while creating a new, transparent supply chain (aka the RJM food chain), that begins in donors' jewelry boxes.

RJM looks at its donors like citizen anthropologists who are combing through their collections, hoards, histories and separating what is to be kept and what is to be given. It is a request that requires mindful participation in that people are investigating their jewelry, its stories, its meaning, its value. Sometimes this is the only type of participation this group of people will have other than potentially claiming a piece at the exhibition at the end of the project installment.

Once material is donated and gathered volunteer, jewelry participants work together to sort, assess, and categorize the jewelry.

Do you have jewelry to donate? Click here to donate it to RJM!