SHR6E032F~001 CHA23084272 Project Viability Study

My interdisciplinary collaborative project mixes the social and political implications of female-owned businesses and the art of self expression, with a functional and physical outcome inspired by music I have made.

Proposed Project

My project, inspired by the Laufey x Catbird partnership, involves jewellery maker Blumine Bijoux who will be making five pieces inspired by songs of mine. Our work will be filmed as a 15-25 minute documentary consisting of interviews, footage of us in our respective fields and photoshoots illustrating the importance of self expression in the creative industries. Our collaboration aims to inspire young women/trans/non-binary business owners.

Goals

My goals for this project are:

To have a collection of five pieces of jewellery by Feb 2026.

To have filmed all the footage for our documentary by March 2026.

To have a edited and composed music for the documentary by April 2026.

To have made a promotional plan and scheduled a release date for our documentary, jewellery collection and music by May 2026.

To release a five piece jewellery collection inspired by songs of mine by June 2026.
To have increased mine and Blu’s audience engagement by 50% by July 2027.

Personnel

The personnel involved in this project are Blumine and I, and a videographer who is yet to be confirmed. I am a singer/songwriter/producer based in Leeds, and I make acoustic pop/R&B.. Blumine is a jewellery maker also based in Leeds, and she makes pieces using Japanese miyuki beads.

Lillie-Apple acoustic pop/R&B

Blumine Bijoux beaded jewellery maker

This project will be completed in four phases:

Phase one: developing a timeline and presenting my project to the class.
Phase two: making the jewellery with Blumine.
Phase three: filming the documentary.
Phase four: editing the documentary and adding music.

Initial Ideas

Initial planning of my collaborative project

First ideas and documentary plan

Songs to be used for Blumine’s Inspo

Blu’s Initial Notes

Homemade Beads

We have agreed to make some beads out of air-dry clay as a cheaper way of sourcing materials and for a rarer, more personal collection of jewellery. This is how they look so far:

Air dry clay

Clay bead prototypes

Google Drive & File Sharing

I have approached this project so far by creating a shared mood board with Blumine, sending her the songs I want to use for this project and planning colour-schemes, patterns etc.

All files throughout the project, such as photos of notes, music and documentary footage will be shared via our google drive.

Music & Software

Here are some examples of the type of music I intend on using for our documentary.

I’ll be using Logic Pro X to adapt my songs and sync the music to the documentary, and I’ll be editing the documentary in iMovie. I’ll be putting the music to the documentary by importing the edited footage into logic and syncing both via specific time stamps.

Logic Pro X for music

iMovie for documentary

How I’ll be adapting the music

Documentary storyboard

Artists such as Laufey, a minimal pop/jazz artist who emerged in 2021, have collaborated with jewellers like Catbird in the past, and they often release a new collection in line with her releases. Find the website here.

This is a great way for fans to connect with an artist, and much like other merchandising options it pays better than just streaming their music.

‘Jordan Gaster, head of A&R at Sandbag, says merch has become much more of a priority in the last decade. “Unless you’re a mainstream pop artist, [artists are] making more money on their merchandise than they are from a record.” This was exacerbated during the pandemic when the income stream from live gigs disappeared.’
(Gaster, Cochrane, 2022)

‘The average small to mid-cap artist makes 8x more per show in Gross Merchandise Sales than a year’s worth of streaming royalties.’
(AtVenu, 2024)

Ella Eyre x Lenique Louis

Rihanna x Anabela Chan

Sentiment and meaning is more important than glam in the modern world (Taylor, 2025)

Slow fashion and sustainability are growing more important (Glezelli, 2025)

Social/Political Context

Below are some articles about the social/political implications of women-owned businesses, I’ll be referring to these articles throughout my project to remind me why it’s important to support and inspire these businesses.

(Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2024)

(Ahuja, 2025)

(Wolf, 2025)

(Mehta, 2023)

(Sables, 2025)

R&B & Social Media

Olivia Dean

RAYE

Cleo Sol

Lillie-Apple

Target Audience

My audience consists of male and female R&B fans from the ages of 18-34. Blumine’s customers are women from the ages of 16-30, this mirrors the youthful colour schemes and beaded patterns Blumine uses. We will be approaching the jewellery making process by getting in our audiences minds to create designs they would want to purchase.

(Spotify For Artists, 2025)

Location of audience (Spotify For Artists, 2025)

Etsy

Blumine’s work could be found in the ‘gifts for her’ and ‘gifts for friends’ guides. (Etsy, 2025)

Blu’s buyers also like varying styles of handmade goods (Etsy, 2025)

Etsy is a well-known and trusted platform amongst business owners (Curry, 2025)

Etsy is home to many independent female-owned businesses (Blanco, 2021)

Gaps In The Market

When looking on Pinterest for inspiration for this project, we couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for, this says that there is a gap in the market for a project like mine.

Blu sells her pieces around £4-28, our target audience is something to consider when deciding the prices for our collection.

Hypothetical Budget

Blu’s time for jewellery making: £300

Blu’s beads and equipment: £50

Videographer’s time for filming: £150

Editor’s time: N/A (me)

Camera hire for high-quality footage: £0 (LCON resources)

Studio hire for lighting: £240

Props for set design: £25

My time for management: £600

Extras: £100

Prices from Lite Studio for rental of a photography studio for select hours (Lite Studio, 2025)

My prediction is that I will be spending around 40 hours on this project, Blu will be spending 20 and our videographer will be spending 10, each at a rate of £15/h which is above minimum wage for workers over 21 (Gov.uk, 2025).

Lillie x Blu hourly breakdown sheet – Sheet1 Download

Invoices

Payments will be requested by my collaborators via invoice:

Potential Funding

Potential funding options are:

Help Musicians MOBO Fund – specifically for R&B/soul projects

PRS Open Fund for Music Creators – for music-based projects

PRS Women Make Music – for female led music-based projects

Blu and I share a mood board with our ideas for specific items of jewellery, photoshoots for the documentary and the style of music we’ll be using for the project.

Jewellery

Documentary

Jewellery documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcpSZC-sBI
Artist interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lPD5PtqMiE
Jewellery ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA88ZP1KRs4
Olivia Dean vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__7WFO5SENs
Alex Consani vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39OLp5BKAc
Jordan Rakei doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqTzZ6l_OGk
Olivia Dean acoustic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYlSa4M2zzM
FKJ live session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfU0QORkRpY
Raye “Suzanne”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev9GGwCrB4s
Photography inspo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cAITheU-CE
Sabrina Claudio live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJgd4RIV_J8

Dakota interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GMHPa1qXI8

Colour Scheme

Music

Strengths

This project is achievable within specific timeframe.
A unique project with a gap in the market.
Profitable and interesting.

Weaknesses

No experience making a documentary before, however Blu and I create content for our social media pages and I have a good bank of references for the video.

Opportunities

Can develop and add to collections as time goes on.
Good marketing for both Blu and I.
Leaves us with lifelong contacts and potential future collaborations.

Threats

Main threat to our project is bad time-management, this could be caused by illnesses/injuries or unexpected delays. To mitigate this, I am going to keep clear communications within the group, and make sure we are all on the same page in terms of my deadline.

Contingency Plan

Presentation Feedback

After presenting my work on 26th Nov 2025, I received some feedback from my class that I can implement as my project moves forward. This has helped me to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in my project so far:

Their first impressions were overall very positive. This means that the foundations of my idea are strong and I can progress smoothly from here.

The class thought my project management was also strong, which was illustrated in my presentation by screenshots of mine and Blu’s messages, mood board and shared google drive.

The class were interested in my idea but didn’t consider themselves part of my target audience, as they weren’t fans of R&B or handmade jewellery. I’d like to make my project more accessible to a wider audience moving forward.

Everyone knew someone who would be interested in the music/jewellery – and someone even knew another jewellery maker who would be interested in this project. This is positive as I’ll have other contacts in case Blu’s workload gets too busy in the upcoming months.

There were some weaknesses in my project, such as a lack of planning for the documentary and niche target audience. This gives me clear insight into what I should focus on improving as my project unfolds, the actions I’ll be taking in response to this feedback are as follows:

Advertising for a videographer on other platforms such as Facebook.
Planning a time-stamped storyboard for the documentary
Planning the music for specific moments in the documentary
Looking at making this project accessible to a wider audience

My class shared how they would approach this project if they were involved, this was interesting to read as it gave me some new ideas to think about.

To conclude, according to my class feedback and general overview of my project, I feel as though my project is very viable and I can see it working positively in the upcoming months.

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