The Design Ventura 2021-22 winners are Cambourne Village College with their product Eco Seed, a doughnut shaped grid which floats on water keeping seeds moist and provoking them to germinate.

Cambourne Village College’s design sheets demonstrate how the team generated and developed their ideas. The sheets clearly show the team’s design and prototyping processes and how they planned to address the criteria set out in the design brief, as well as allowing our shortlisting judges to clearly understand the final product design.

The team competed against 18,000 students from 397 schools across the UK. With their entry, Cambourne Village College earned a place in the top 10 shortlisted schools. As one of the shortlisted schools, they were invited to pitch their design idea to a panel of judges on 22 March. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2021-22. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

Cambourne Village College team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products are exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

You can see the student team from Cambourne Village College talking about Eco Seed on BBC Cambridge and read about the winning product on Hort News.

Following the Celebration Event, the student team worked with design agency Triple Double Studio and Batch.Works to develop their Design Ventura 2021-22 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place at both design agencies studios in London.

Eco seed launched at the Design Museum on 16th January 2023. The students from Cambourne Village College came to museum to launch the product in the shop. The product is on sale for £10.00 and all the proceeds will be donated to the students charity of choice: MND Association.

On Monday 3rd July 2023 the student team returned to the Design Museum to present a cheque from the sales of Eco Seed. The school raised an amazing £2550.42 for their chosen charity MND Association

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

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The event was kicked off by Fiona MacDonald, Head of Learning at the Design Museum. To begin the celebrations, schools were invited to join an insightful talk from Sheana Yu, founder of Aergo and Tiya Dahyabhai, Assistant Curator at the Design Museum. Sheana shared her journey as a designer, engineer and founder, seeking ways for design to empower the users. Tiya talked about her career following her passion for textile design and audience engagement.

After tea and cake and while friends and family were on a tour of the Football: Designing the Beautiful Game, students had a chance to participate in an exciting drawing workshop led by Peter Ayres and a typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting.

In the afternoon, students and guests enjoyed a careers insight speed networking activity meeting various design and business experts including a graphic designer, product designer, illustrator, and UX/UI designer to name a few.

In the evening, the Design Museum opened its doors to the shortlisted school teams, their teachers, family and friends, Deutsche Bank employees, design industry experts, the Design Museum team and special VIP guests to celebrate the success of Design Ventura 2021-22.

The Awards

Fiona MacDonald began by welcoming the schools and guests to the museum. Then, this was followed by Tim Marlow, CEO and Director of the Design Museum and Christoph Woermann, Chief Marketing Officer of Corporate Bank Marketing at Deutsche Bank.

Amy Harris, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility UK at Deutsche Bank announced Ben Myers from Ferndown Upper School as the Teacher of the Year award. Judges then took it in turn to announce the Design Ventura awards:

OUTSTANDING FINALIST: Prendergast Ladywell School
OUTSTANDING FINALIST: The Piggott School
OUTSTANDING FINALIST: County Upper School
COMMENDATION FOR GOOD DESIGN PROCESS: Ferndown Upper School
COMMENDATION FOR MOST MARKET READY PRODUCT: South Wilts Grammar School
COMMENDATION FOR INGENUITY: Orleans Park School
COMMENDATION FOR BEST PRESENTATION: Liverpool Blue Coat School
Third Place: Salford City Academy
Second Place: Tiffin School

Christoph Woermann announced the winning team Cambourne Village College with ‘Eco Seed‘, a floating doughnut shaped grid which keeps the seeds or plants moist, provoking them to germinate.

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition was unveiled including all the student made prototypes. This year the display included the past winning product Grow Wild by Heckmondwike Grammar School. The exhibition will run from 29 April – 26 June 2022. You can find out more about visiting the exhibition here.

Thank you to all the schools, judges and guests for attending for this very special event celebrating the achievements of the Design Ventura 2021-22 finalists!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

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Each team had a chance to present their product idea and prototypes to our panel of expert judges who were extremely impressed with the professionalism of the students’ three minute pitches.

The judges from left to right: Rosa Bertoli, Christoph Woermann, Preena Patel, Yuri Suzuki and Sebastian Conran.

Lareena Hilton, Global Head of Brand Communications & CSR at Deutsche Bank, kicked off the event with a very warm welcome to Winchester House.

Fiona MacDonald, Head of Learning at the Design Museum thanked everyone for coming and passed over to Ellen Ferguson who invited each school up to pitch.

The panel had a fantastic time meeting the students, watching their presentations and questioning them about their product ideas. The students were very well prepared and gave fantastic answers!

Whilst the judges were busy deliberating and having to make very difficult decisions choosing all the prize winners, the students took part in a fun design challenge, seeing who could create the tallest Jenga tower!

Cambourne Village College won the challenge with a very tall tower!

The day ended with the judges giving constructive feedback to all the teams. The winner will be announced in April when all the schools will return to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event.

All photos ©Luc Schol/Design Museum

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Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. This year we have a shortlist of ten state schools in the main competition for this year’s celebration event in April.

We had over 18,000 students participating this year, so our panel of shortlisting judges did not have an easy task. After much debate, the final top ten state school entries and top three schools in the International and Independent Category were selected – please see a full list in alphabetical order below.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

All schools that have submitted an entry for Design Ventura will receive feedback from our judges and will be sent participation certificates for their students by post – we will send these soon.

This year, the top ten state shortlisted schools will be contacted with further details about the Pitching event taking place on Tuesday 22 March at the Winchester House. 

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2021-22

(in alphabetical order)

Cambourne Village College, Cambridge 
Eco Seed
A product which allows users to grow seeds and watch seeds germinate and allowing the user to observe the plant’s growth the entirety of nature in its fullest form.

County Upper School, Suffolk
Sunny London
A fun craft kit for children and families featuring great British design icons to create stained glass windows.

Ferndown Upper School, Dorset
The Flippy Book
A Flip-Book to mix and match iconic designs and unlock your creativity.

Liverpool Blue Coat School, Liverpool
Designosaur
A dinosaur shaped buildable and customisable plant pot to grow herb.

Orleans Park School, Twickenham
The Sturdy Stabiliser
Portable and reusable pads to fix your wobbly chairs and tables when out. 

Prendergast Ladywell School, London
Grow Your Story
A biodegradable fairytale storybook with a plant kit.

Salford City Academy, Manchester
Tongue Twister Game
A card game with alliterative phrases challenging the players to pronounce individual words.

South Wilts Grammar School, Wiltshire
Gender Jigsaw
Jigsaw pieces with preferred pronouns to be worn on your clothing.

The Piggott School, Berkshire
Corky
A quirky pineapple soft toy made of cork, bamboo and felt.

Tiffin School, Kingston upon Thames
Drummable
A DIY cardboard drum-kit creating a wide range of textures and sounds.

INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT CATEGORY

(in alphabetical order)

American Community School, Amman
Soaprise
A soap with a surprise toy hidden in inside.

Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School, Crosby
RMP: Recycled Music Products
A stylish and chic jewellery made of old vinyl records.

St Andrews International School, Bangkok
Dino Plant
A recycled seed paper based origami set of the iconic Loch Ness monster.

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Christoph Woermann
Global Head of Corporate Bank Marketing at Deutsche Bank. Christoph has a passion for garden design and is an ardent supporter of the Design Ventura project and a seasoned member of the judging panel.

Preena Patel
Preena Patel is the Buying and Merchandising Manager at the Design Museum with over a decade of experience in retail positioning, licensing, brand buying and product development and is accountable for delivery of commercially successful ranges instore and online.

Preena is an advocate for sustainability as standard in retail, and hosted a pitch for 50 business to justify why they consider themselves ‘sustainable’ before re-strategizing the retail offer to feature eco conscious product at core

Preena is also Retail strategist for multi-disciplinary artist Yinka Ilori. Preena has a creative and commercial approach to retail aided by her training in fashion design, has obsessive passion for product, and takes great satisfaction from watching customer reactions in store!

Rosa Bertoli
Rosa Bertoli was born in Udine, Italy, and now lives in London. Since 2014, she has been the Design Editor of Wallpaper*, where she oversees design content for the print and online editions, as well as special editorial projects. Through her role at Wallpaper*, she has written extensively about all areas of design. Rosa has been speaker and moderator for various design talks and conferences including London Craft Week, Maison & Objet, The Italian Cultural Institute (London), Zaha Hadid Design, Kartell and Frieze Art Fair. Rosa has been on judging panels for the Chart Architecture Award, the Dutch Design Awards and the DesignGuild Marks. She has written for numerous English and Italian language publications, and worked as a content and communication consultant for fashion and design brands.

Sebastian Conran
Sebastian wanted to be an inventor whilst at school and got A levels in Maths Physics and Chemistry; then he studied Industrial Design Engineering at Central St. Martins, where he gave the Sex Pistols their first booking and designed record sleeves and posters for The Clash. After this he worked at corporate identity consultancy Wolff Olins followed by leading hard-goods development at Mothercare, after which he founded Sebastian Conran Associates design studio in 1986 and taught furniture design at the Royal College of Art. Sebastian is now a trustee of the Design Museum, Chair of the Conran Foundation and Conran + Partners, Visiting Professor of Design & Innovation at Bristol Robotics Lab, Designer in Residence at University of Sheffield engineering faculty; he also writes & lectures on innovation.

Yuri Suzuki
The Design Ventura 2021 brief setter, Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician. He is Partner at design firm Pentagram and works out of studios in London and Margate. His work ranges from small products to large scale installations. His practice uses sound and interaction to look at the relationship between people and their environments.

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Clare Moore
Clare is a Chartered Architect, with a wealth of experience delivering projects in public and private sectors of the industry. This is complimented by her extensive experience as an educator at UK Universities. Clare founded C3M Studio in 2009, a London based architectural practice that provides furniture installations, refurbishments, education and residential projects. Her conceptual approach is characterised by pealing back layers to reveal the original character of existing buildings, by utilising appropriate sustainable materials to creatively reuse and enhance original beauty.

Harry Mitchell
Harry co-founded Beta Design Office, a London based multi-disciplinary design consultancy with a core focus on industrial design. An inventor and maker at heart, Harry’s mechanical intuition and love for how things work means he designs products that last. Previously Associate Director at Sebastian Conran Associates, he has worked on a variety of projects from consumer robotics through to furniture, homewares, and custom motorcycles. 

Jodie Valery
Jodie Valery is a graphic designer at Formula E which is a championship seeing electric cars race around the world. Jodie enjoys working in entertainment/media areas, that also promote sustainability and storytelling through creativity, with her last job also being at BBC Studios. She has experience working with branding, editorial, event branding and campaigns, but when she is not working she loves to practise drawing, do personal design work and go to exhibitions. Design Ventura has been influential in her creativity interest and career as being one of the first winning teams and she finds it great to come back to volunteer with and be a part of the museum.

Sam Griffiths
Sam Griffiths is a designer and the founder of Griffics which has the aim of making the world a more playful place. He develops artwork, products, activities, workshops and projects to help make this happen. He’s interested in the potential of play and playfulness to unlock creativity and address social and environmental issues. He has a background in branding, working with large and small clients to deliver pragmatic, creative and impactful work. His work is largely collaborative, he believes in designing with people, not for them. He loves designing and facilitating workshops that help people embrace their own creativity.

Samuel Mensah
Samuel Mensah is an Award Winning multi-disciplinary Creative, with a focus on Design, Product & Brand. He provides holistic design solutions for branding with conceptual rigour and mastered aesthetic.

Yelizaveta (Liza) Shinkarenko
Liza is a UX designer working on Client Lifecycle Transformation and Client Facing Portal projects in Desutsche Bank, London. Prior to becoming a UX designer Liza was working as a Project Manager and as a QA Automation engineer on various projects across the industry, which gave her a well-rounded understanding of the Software Development process and a critical role that an end user plays in it.
Liza is passionate about the way art, design and science can bridge the gap between humans and machines, with a goal to create a bright and sustainable future.

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