The Student Design Awards, the world’s longest-running design competition, are marking one century since their launch. Every year, we welcome young designers and students from across the globe to apply their skills and creativity to answer design briefs that focus on the most pressing social and environmental challenges.
The Pupil Design Awards – turning 10 this year – opens up these briefs to UK secondary schools. This is in part to combat a growing disinvestment in design skills among 11–18-year-olds in the UK. In 2022, the number of design GCSE entries was just 20% of their 2003 levels.
As we celebrate this unique double birthday and launch the 2023-24 round of awards, we want to invite even more people to participate. This blog explores our legacy of active inclusion and outlines our commitments to make this year the boldest and most far-reaching awards cycle to date.
Inclusion and the RSA design awards
Centred on the emergent practice of industrial design, the founding purpose of the Student Design Awards was to bring together different disciplines, break down boundaries and invite new perspectives. This meant being open to global entrants (applications in the first year came from as far afield as Japan, South Africa and Pakistan) and platforming those who had less access to learning opportunities (over half of the initial winners were women).
Today, we remain committed to ensuring our design awards welcome participants from all backgrounds to lend their talents to solving real-world issues. The awards continue to champion women designers across the generations. For example, we worked with Pupil Design Awards judge Andrew Knight (Head of the government's Policy Design Community) to offer award winner Lily Macaskill and her teacher Laura Gray the chance to feature as a case study on the GOV.UK blog, Public Policy Design.
We launched a global bursary in 2016 (and expanded to UK participants last year) to address the financial barriers which might prevent students from entering. To date, around 45% of our submissions are from outside the UK, with entrants from over 20 countries. We’ve had incredible international winners; 2020-21’s Home Sweet Home brief winner Athul Dinesh entered from India’s National Institute of Design and has gone on to teach there.
Most importantly, those who participate find the experience deeply impactful in terms of building confidence, expanding their design practice and providing insight into both community and commercial realities.
The students loved it, they really loved it… They really took away a lot from it careers-wise and understanding of the wider world.
We know there’s still more we can do to actively weave in the talents and ideas of those not yet able to participate. While interest in the Pupil Design Awards from state schools is high (over 50% of registrations in 2022 were from state schools), their submission rate was 38% (compared with 62% from independent schools) and the proportion of state school pupils receiving a commendation was only 25%. Similarly, in 2022’s Student Design Awards, all our winners and commended students were from universities in the UK and Ireland. Most educators and applicants for both design awards were – unsurprisingly – those who already saw themselves as designers, completing related courses. Our goal of inclusion is the same, but now our strategies need to change to fit today’s context.
Being involved in this brief allowed me to do something that had a real-world impact. It also helped me understand, from an industry point of view, how we can create tangible solutions that change life for the better.
New commitments after a century of awards
For the centenary year of the Student Design Awards, we have set ourselves ambitious targets for outreach, equity and inclusion. We know for these to be achieved, we need to proactively reach out to new partners and address access barriers in our processes. Some of these blockers (eg reduced resources for prototyping ideas and English-only briefs) we might already know and be looking at resolving. Others we are hoping to uncover through deep partnership work.
For the Pupil Design Awards, we want to get much closer to reflecting school attendance in the UK, where around 90% of pupils are in state education. To do this, we aim to double the number of submissions we receive with at least 60% of those coming from state schools (particularly those with more than 20% of pupils receiving free school meals). We are also in the process of finding partner schools among special education and alternative provision institutions to offer more intensive support to their children. We will adapt our judging process so that 60% of those shortlisted for commendations are also state school pupils. We will invite teachers from across disciplines – biology, geography, politics, media studies and more – to join our workshops. Our funders at Comino Foundation, as well as our connections through previous RSA projects (eg Preventing school exclusions), are helping us learn more about pupil, parent and teacher needs.
For the Student Design Awards, we are again mindful of the power of cross-disciplinary teams and want to reach out to a broader spectrum of students, having 20% of applications come from those without a design background. We want to strengthen the nascent ties we’ve begun to create with further education colleges and make the awards exciting and relevant for students pursuing vocational studies and apprenticeships. Our target is to have 10% of submissions from non-university institutions. Finally, we will leverage our global Fellow network, as well as links with our affiliates in North America and Oceania, to seek 50% of our entries from students outside the UK.
I started off being a bit anxious about [engaging people outside of the classroom]. But then I started to get positive feedback saying that ‘what you're doing is really creative’ and ‘you should keep this up’. That just made me want to do it more and get as many answers as possible.
As this round will be the last outing of the Student and Pupil Design Awards in their current incarnation (we’re launching the reimagined Design for Life Awards to more strongly align with our mission from September 2024) the team see a chance to test and learn what is needed to truly make our awards the most inclusive in the world.
Can you help us deliver on our promise?
The design awards team would welcome support from anyone interested in our inclusion campaign and our wider awards offer. There are multiple ways for you to get involved:
- Are you an educator or know an educator? Check out the Pupil Design and Student Design Awards briefs for 2023-24 and contact us if you want to know more about how to implement the awards at your organisation.
- Are you a Fellow? Sign up to the Design for Life Awards space on Circle to get updates on opportunities especially for you. Not a Fellow, learn about what Circle, our online community platform, offers our global network of changemakers.
- Generally, want to find out more? Drop an email to: sdaenquiries@rsa.org.uk.
Other design awards content you might be interested in
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Facing the future: Scotland's challenges
Fellowship news
Fionna Monk
On 26 November 2024, RSA Scotland discussed Scotland’s future with nine engaging speakers addressing various challenges facing the country. The venue was resonant – a former committee room at the French Institute used in its early days by the Scottish Parliament. This successful event was chaired with deftness and humour by the former Presiding Officer at the Parliament, Rt Hon Ken Macintosh.
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Improving health through economic development
Report
Anna Markland Liv Chai Nicholas Heslop
The RSA have created an Economies for Healthier Lives Programme Coaching Resource that pulls together our experience, insight and case studies from the five ‘Hubs’. This resource is designed to support those looking to learn from and replicate this work to get supported at every stage, from project inception through to legacy planning.
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You asked, we listened. RSA Strengthens global and local connections for Fellows
Fellowship news
Line Kristensen Fionna Monk
From our online global community platform Circle to enhanced local co-working spaces and personalised communications, we’re doing all we can to facilitate engagement with the RSA.