International and Independent Category Winners 2020

This week the Design Ventura team celebrated the top three shortlisted schools in the International and Independent Category. Each school submitted a 3 minute video pitch, which was reviewed by this year’s judging panel to choose a winner.

The top three schools were then invited to a prize day at the Design Museum on Tuesday 6 July. The students enjoyed access to the Design Museum exhibitions, Sneakers Unboxed and Charlotte Perriand, followed by lunch and an award ceremony.

Duncan Sanders, Head of Trading at the Design Museum and one of this year’s judges announced the awards. We are happy to announce the prizes awarded were:

Third Place: Guilford High School
The Smart House Chart
A cardboard flat-pack house that you can assemble and decorate that serves as a reward chart for young children.

Second Place: Haberdashers Aske’s School for Girls’
Bamboo Bauble
A set of customisable baubles made from bamboo.

First Place: Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School
Figaros
A board game that encourages creativity where players create images out of shapes.

Well done teams!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

Design Ventura 2020 Winning Product Grow Wild

The Design Ventura 2020 winners are Heckmondwike Grammar School with their product Grow Wild (formerly called Sow Beautiful), a flower seed canon used to disperse seeds to help tackle bee decline by creating a source of pollen for wild bees.

Heckmondwike Grammar School’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 15,000 students from 270 schools across the UK. With their entry, Heckmondwike Grammar School earned a place in the shortlist as one of the seven schools asked to submit a 3-minute pitch video to be reviewed by our pitching judges on 12 May. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

Design Ventura 2020’s pitching day took place online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Heckmondwike team made a convincing case for Sow Beautiful producing an engaging pitch video and demonstrating clearly how the product fulfilled the design brief and judging criteria. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2020.

The Heckmondwicke Grammar School team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top seven shortlisted products were exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

You can see the student team from Heckmondwike talking about Sow Beautiful on Leeds Local TV and read more about their process on PBS News Hour and the Guardian.

Following the Celebration Event, the student team from Heckmondwike worked with design agency Tom, Dick and Harry to develop their Design Ventura 2020 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place at Castleton Mill in Leeds. You can read more about the students experience in their blog post here.

The students returned to the Design Museum in February to launch their product in the Design Museum Shop. The product is now on sale and retails at £6.50. All proceeds go to the student’s chosen charity Kirkwood Hospice. Buy it here.

The students wrote about their experience of developing their product for sale. You can read about this on our blog.

The student team visited Kirkwood Hospice, their chosen charity on 8 July 2022.

They presented the charity with a cheque from the total sales their product made in the Design Museum shop. Impressively, Grow Wild raised a total of £1,859.

Design Ventura 2020 Celebration Event

On Friday 11 July 2021 the Design Ventura team welcomed the top seven shortlisted schools to the Design Museum for a day of celebration.

The event was kicked off by Fiona MacDonald, Head of Learning at the Design Museum, who was followed by Tim Marlow, CEO and Director of the Design Museum and Christoph Woermann, Chief Marketing Officer at Deutsche Bank.

To begin the celebrations schools enjoyed a talk about the Design Museum’s exhibition Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street by Rachel Hajek, Assistant Curator at the museum, followed by visiting the exhibition.

In the afternoon students enjoyed lunch followed by the award announcements! The award ceremony was live streamed so friends and family could watch at home. The highlights can be watched here: Winners Announcements

The Awards

Fiona MacDonald began by announcing the top Design Ventura Online Mini Challenge winners, a online challenge for year 7 & 8’s rolled out during the pandemic with over 3,000 entries. The shortlist was:

Betsy – Davison High School
Ivy – The Nottingham Emmanuel School
Emma – Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School
Tom – Liverpool College
Lara – Walthamstow School for Girls
Aoife – Didcot Girls’ School.

Lareena Hilton, Global Head of Brand Communications and CSR at Deutsche Bank announced Liam Anderson from Trinity School as the Teacher of the Year award. Judges then took it in turn to announce the Design Ventura awards:

Outstanding Finalist: The Burgess Hill Academy with ‘Play Cube’
Commendation for Good Design Process: County Upper School with ‘Safari Matchimals’
Commendation for Entrepreneurship: Ferndown Upper School with ‘Build & Play’
Commendation for Most Market Ready Product: Trinity School with ‘Magic Leaf’
Third Place runner up: Davison High School for Girls with ‘Positivitree’
Second Place runner up: Parkside Community College with ‘The Shoe Button’

Brief Setter Yinka Ilori announced the winning team Heckmondwike Grammar School with ‘Sow Beautiful’, a flower seed canon used to grow flowers and create a source of pollen for bees. You can watch their pitch video here.

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition was unveiled including all the student made prototypes. This year the display included the top winning designs from the online mini challenge and the Design Ventura 2019 past winning product Creative [Un]blocks by Twynham School. The exhibition will run from 12 June – 22 August 2021. You can book free tickets to see the exhibition here.

Following the event, a number of the school groups were interviewed for press, you can read some student insights into their products on PBS News Hour and you can see the winning team talking about Sow Beautiful on Leeds Local TV.

Thank you to all the schools, judges and guests for attending for this very special event celebrating the achievements of the Design Ventura 2020 finalists!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

Design Ventura 2020 Online Pitching Event

On Wednesday 12 May 2021, the Design Ventura team hosted an online pitching event as part of the Design Ventura 2020 competition. The shortlisted schools were invited to create a 3 minute pitch video explaining their product idea. This was reviewed by our panel of expert judges as part of the online pitching event.

The judges were incredibly impressed by the professionalism of the students’ pitch videos. You can watch a selection of short snippets of these in the video below:

The seven state schools also joined the judges for a 15 minute live Q&A session. This was an opportunity for the judges to ask the students further questions about their design process and product idea. The judges really enjoyed meeting the students and learning more about their designs.

Well done to all the student teams for all their hard work. We look forward to welcoming the state schools to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event on Friday 11 June 2021, where the winner will be announced. The schools in the International and Independent Category will attend an award day at the Design Museum in July.

Good luck teams!

Design Ventura Shortlist 2020

We are pleased to announce the shortlisted entries for Design Ventura 2020.

Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. The Covid-19 pandemic has made this a very challenging year, especially for teachers, students and schools. Despite these challenges, we have been incredibly impressed by the creativity and effort students have put into this year’s competition. This year we have a shortlist of seven state schools in the main competition to allow for social distancing at this year’s Celebration Event in June.

We had over 15,000 students participating this year, so our panel of shortlisting judges did not have an easy task. After much debate, the final top seven 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, all the shortlisted schools have been asked to submit a 3-minute pitch video to be reviewed by our pitching judges on 12 May. The top seven state schools will also attend a live Q&A session with the judges.

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2020

(in alphabetical order)

County Upper School, Suffolk
Safari Matchimals
A set of flat pack safari animals with interchangeable body parts that can be coloured in and then mixed and matched to create new creatures.

Davison Church of England High School for Girls, West Sussex
Positivitree
A giftable plant in pyramidal packaging that is aimed at boosting mental wellbeing.

Ferndown Upper School, Dorset
‘Build & Play’ (Modernist House of Cards)
A pack of cards with iconic architectural designs on them which slot together to create new design structures.

Heckmondwike Grammar School, West Yorkshire
Sow Beautiful
A flower seed canon used to grow flowers and create a source of pollen for bees.

Parkside Community College, Cambridgeshire
The Shoe Button
A small gadget designed to help people learn how to tie their shoelaces.

The Burgess Hill Academy, West Sussex
Play Cube
A wooden play cube that contains toy cars and transforms into a road map play scene for young children.

Trinity School, Berkshire
Magic Leaf 
A leaf shaped device that lets you know if your plants need watering by changing colour from green to white.

INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT CATEGORY

Schools in this category will be contacted and will be asked to submit a three-minute video pitch. There will be an award day for this category in July.

(in alphabetical order)

Guildford High School
The Smart House Chart
A cardboard flat-pack house that can be assembled and decorated. It is intended as a reward chart for young children.

Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls
Bamboo Bauble
A set of customisable bauble decorations made from bamboo.

Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School
Figaros
A board game that encourages creativity through prompt cards which tell players an object (e.g rocket ship) they have to recreate out of the provided shapes. Like Pictionary but with shapes.

Design Ventura Winning Product 2019 Creative [Un]blocks

The Design Ventura 2019 winners are Twynham School with their product originally called Design Cubes (now Creative [Un]blocks), a set of dice that help combat creative block. Users roll three dice to create a brief that they have to answer in 60 seconds. This fun and inspiring game was a favourite of the judges. 

Twynham School’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 16,000 students from 300 schools across the UK. With their entry, Twynham School earned a place in the shortlist as one of the ten schools invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges at Winchester House in December 2019. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

The team made a convincing case for Design Cubes at the pitching event, presenting an engaging pitch and demonstrating clearly how the product fulfilled the design brief and judges criteria. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2019.

The Twynham School team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products were exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

Following the Celebration Event, students from Twynham School worked with design studio Triple Double to develop their Design Ventura 2019 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place via Zoom during lock down.

For the second meeting the students travelled to Mile End in London to see the Triple Double Studio.

The socially distanced meeting was followed by a creative workshop where the students used disposable cameras to capture examples of typography in the area.

Due to lockdown, the product was launched on the Design Museum Shop online. Retailing at £5.95, all proceeds from the sales go to the students’ chosen charity Rainforest Alliance UK.

To celebrate the launch of their product, the students enjoyed a half day or creative activities including a typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting and had an unboxing of their product.

In February 2021, the Design Museum Shop window had a Creative [Un]Blocks window takeover in High Street Kensington, to showcase the physical products to passers by. Creative [Un]Blocks sold out and raised a grand total of £1560 for Rainforest Alliance UK.

The student team returned to the Design Museum on 17 June 2021 to present a cheque to their chosen charity Rainforest Alliance UK.

International and Independent Category Winners 2019

In December, the judging panel had the difficult decision of choosing a winning team for the International and Independent Category for Design Ventura 2019. Three schools were shortlisted and each team submitted a three minute video pitch.

We are pleased to announce the awards for the International and Independent Category are:

THIRD PLACE
Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, Hertfordshire
Four Treasures
A board game that helps children learn about geography.

SECOND PLACE
Wrekin College, Shropshire
Iso-Box
An isometric drawing aid shaped like a London telephone box that includes a ruler and a protractor.

FIRST PLACE
More House School, Surrey
Grip Spin 
A self-assemble fidget toy that attaches to the end of a pencil or pen.

Despite the current limitations caused by COVID-19, we still managed to celebrate each teams success by sending them their certificates and goody bags in the post.

Well done teams!

Design Ventura 2019 Celebration Event

On Thursday 13 February the Design Ventura team welcomed the top ten shortlisted schools to the Design Museum for a special day celebrating design.

The day was kicked off by Fiona MacDonald, Head of Learning at the Design Museum, who was followed by two great talks, one from Jessica Ryan-Ndegwa from Design for Disability and another about Learning to Fail from Paul Jenkins at Triple Double.

After tea and cake and while friends and family were on a tour of Beazley Designs of the Year, students had a chance to participate in an exciting paper forms workshop led by designer Haidée Drew and a typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting.

In the afternoon students and guests enjoyed a careers insight speed networking activity, which allowed them to ask experts from industry about how their creative and enterprise skills have supported their successful transition into the workplace.

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 2019.

The event gave the students a chance to explain their innovative products to guests, network with people from the industry and be advocates for their schools. Guest were really impressed with the confidence and communication skills that the students demonstrated.

Last year’s winners Simon Balle All-through School presented a cheque of £2,479.24 from the proceeds of their product (Active Snap) to a representative of their chosen charity, MOVE.

The anticipated announcement of the Design Ventura 2019 awards was presented by the judges: Katie Greenyer, Morag Myerscough and Joseph Halligan.

The prizes were awarded as follows: Blythe Bridge High School, County Upper School, George Spencer Academy and Wallington High School for Girls were awarded as Outstanding Finalists; Ashcroft Technology Academy was awarded Commendation for Most Market Ready Product; Cardinal Newman Catholic School was awarded Commendation for Ingenuity; and Upton-by-Chester High School was awarded Commendation for the Sustainable Design. The third place was awarded to Trinity School; second place was awarded to Ferndown Upper School and finally the Design Ventura Winner 2019 was Twynham School with Design Cubes.

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition with prototypes from all ten shortlisted schools was unveiled. This year, the display also includes all past winning student designed products from the past decade of the programme and an interactive area where members of the public can tackle the Design Ventura brief. The display is up until 27 May.

The Celebration Event was about celebrating design and congratulating all those involved in Design Ventura 2019. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Design Ventura project making it such a success!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

Design Ventura Pitching Event 2019

On 9 December 2019, the Design Ventura team welcomed the top ten shortlisted schools to Deutsche Bank HQ, Winchester House, for the 2019 Pitching Event. Below is a film of the event:

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: Katie Greenyer, Duncan Sanders, Christoph Woermann, Morag Myerscough, and Joseph Halligan.

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

Alice Black, Director of 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!

George Spencer Academy 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 February when all the schools will return to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event.

All photos ©Richard Heald/Design Museum

Design Ventura Shortlist 2019

We are pleased to announce the top 10 entries for Design Ventura 2019.

Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. It is thanks to all of you that Design Ventura is such a huge success!

We had over 16,000 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 submissions 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 participation certificates for all their students by post – we will send the certificates soon.

This year’s shortlisted state schools will be contacted with further details about the Pitching Event taking place at Winchester House on Monday 9 December.

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2019

(in alphabetical order)

Ashcroft Technology Academy, London
Rocket Man Bookmark
A rocket shaped bookmark, with an attached rocket man, that can be customized with photos.

Blythe Bridge High School, Staffordshire
Pixel Bricks
An art/design kit that allows people to create pixelated designs and patterns using coloured pieces that fit together like a jigsaw.

Cardinal Newman Catholic School, East Sussex
Travel Buddy
A travel tag that can be customized with stickers, to help people remember what they need to pack for their holidays.

County Upper School, Suffolk
Magnamals
Animal shaped magnets that come in three pieces so that they can be mixed and matched to create new creatures.

Ferndown Upper School, Dorset
Finger Fussball
A design themed version of finger football where the teams are made up of figures from the Bauhaus and other art/design movements.

George Spencer Academy, Nottinghamshire
Colour the Rainforest
A rainforest themed activity kit for children that includes a rainforest colouring in sheet and felt pencil toppers/finger puppets of endangered animals. The kit aims to raise awareness about endangered animals and their habitats.

Trinity School, Berkshire
Roll up Bamboo Pencil Case
A sustainable roll up bamboo pencil case.

Twynham School, Dorset
Design Cubes
A dice game that helps people generate design ideas and combats creative block. Three dice with different categories help students generate creative ideas.

Upton-by-Chester High School, Cheshire
Food Chain Puzzle
An educational wooden puzzle for young children, where the organisms must be put in the order that they appear in the food chain.

Wallington High School for Girls, Surrey
Jigsters
A set of cork coasters in jigsaw shapes, that fit together to form a place-mat depicting imagery relating to the Design Museum exhibition Moving to Mars.

INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT CATEGORY

Schools in this category will be contacted separately and will be asked to submit a three-minute video pitch.

(in alphabetical order)

Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, Hertfordshire
Four Treasures
A board game that helps children learn about geography.

More House School, Surrey
Grip Spin
A self-assemble fidget toy that attaches to the end of a pencil or pen.

Wrekin College, Shropshire
Iso-Box
A drawing aid shaped like a London telephone box that includes a ruler and a protractor.

Example Submission: 2018 Family Stuff Fund

As the deadline for Design Ventura approaches, we wanted to look back at the submission that won ‘commendation for most market ready product’ back in Design Ventura 2018.

The judges loved Spalding School’s Family Stuff Fund. The panel liked that the idea improved every day life for one of the Design Museum Shop’s target users – families. This was well demonstrated thorough development, prototyping and research.

Below is their submission form and A3 sheets. We’d like to highlight some of the strengths and some areas for improvement from their submission, things to look out for when submitting for Design Ventura 2019.

Strengths:

1. Clarity – the layout is clear and easy to understand. The sheets clearly communicate what the product is and show the design process. Also, each sheet has the name of the school at the bottom.
2. Design Development – the sheets show the design process. They include initial sketches of the idea, research into similar existing products, photos of prototypes and ideas for packaging design.
3. Budgeting – they have looked at costings and suppliers.

Areas for improvement:

1. Further research – while they have shown good research of other similar products, some further research of the Design Museum Shop specifically could have been useful to show.
2. User testing and feedback – including feedback on their design by their target audience would have strengthened this entry.
3. Sustainability – more information about how they plan to minimise the negative impact of their product on the environment would have strengthened this entry.

The Spalding High School team made it into the Design Ventura 2018 top ten shortlist with this submission. They pitched their ideas to our expert judges at the Pitching Event in December and were awarded ‘commendation for most market ready product’ at the Celebration Event in February.

We can’t wait to see all the wonderful submissions for Design Ventura 2019!

Design Ventura Winning Product 2018 Active Snap

The Design Ventura 2018 winners are Simon Balle All-through School with their product originally called HIT Snap (now Active Snap), a version of the game Snap to help children keep active. When a snap is made, the opponent must perform the exercises pictured on the card. This fun and proactive game was a favourite of the judges. Buy it now!

Simon Balle All-through School’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.

Simon Balle All-through School’s entry form:

The team competed with over 14,300 students taking part in 271 schools across the UK. With their entry, Simon Balle All-through School earned a place on the shortlist as one of ten schools invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges at the Design Museum in December 2018. You can watch the video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

The team made a convincing case for HIT Snap at the pitching event, presenting an engaging pitch and demonstrating clearly how the product fulfilled the design brief and judges criteria. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2018.

The Simon Balle All-through School team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products were exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

Following the Celebration Event, students from Simon Balle All-through School worked with design studio Triple Double to develop their Design Ventura 2018 winning product.

Through collaborative sessions they worked together to get HIT Snap ready to be made and sold in the Design Museum Shop. They redesigned the look of product and renamed it Active Snap.

The product was launched at the Design Museum Shop on 18 June 2019. On the launch day, the team put their sales skills to the test, selling their product at the Deutsche Bank Office. Impressively, they sold 80 packs in less than two hours.

All the proceeds from the sale of Active Snap went to the team’s chosen charity, MOVE a charity for people living with cancer. Impressively, Active Snap raised a total of £2,479.

After a successful run in the Design Museum Shop, Active Snap continued its journey. In February 2021 a new version of Active Snap was launched by the renowned toy manufacturer Tomy. This was a great achievement by the student team and their teacher, Mr Jack Andrews, with support from Triple Double, to have Active Snap developed and distributed for nationwide sale.

Design Ventura 2018 Second Place Prize Day

On Friday 5 April, the Design Ventura team welcomed East Barnet School, this year’s second place runners up, to the Design Museum for an exciting day of design workshops, exhibition tours and more.

The judges were impressed with East Barnet School’s product, BEEkind, a colourful card made from bee saving paper that includes a step by step guide to reviving exhausted bees, which won them second place for Design Ventura 2018. You can read all about the awards event here.

Their Second Place Prize Day began with a tour of the Holland Park Ecology Centre, where the team learnt all about bees and what can be done to protect them and increase their numbers.

Following this, the team went out into Holland park to capture and identify different types of bees. In total they caught and identified four types of bee and one hover fly, masquerading as a bee.

After lunch, the team enjoyed a tour of David Adjaye: Making Memory with Museum Educator Tiffany Radmore and a design workshop with graphic designer Lilly Marques.

The students pitched their further developed product idea to Steven Preston, Retail Operations Manager at the Design Museum and were awarded with bee themed goody bags in recognition of their hard work.

Thank you to everyone who made the day such an enjoyable one and congratulations once again to East Barnet School!

International and Independent Category Winners 2018

Last week the Design Ventura team celebrated the top three shortlisted schools in the International and Independent Category.

Duncan Sanders, Head of Trading and Sevra Davis, Head of Learning at the Design Museum started the event by handing out the awards.

We are happy to announce the prizes awarded were:

THIRD PLACE
International Community School
Cubic Maths – A game that helps children learn maths, three cubes make up sums that you answer against an opponent.

SECOND PLACE
Lady Eleanor Holles School
SCRATCH IT – An A6 calendar where you scratch off each day to reveal a fun design fact.

FIRST PLACE
The St Michael Steiner School
The Copper Line – A science kit, where a battery, magnets and copper wire produce electromagnetic waves to propel a ‘train’ through a ‘tunnel’. 

After the prize giving, Peter Ayres from Beep Studio talked to students about his journey to becoming a designer and then lead the group in a fast paced workshop exploring how they can use drawing to communicate their product ideas.

Tea and cake made the perfect end of a fun afternoon celebrating great designs.

Well done teams!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

Design Ventura Celebration Event 2018

On Wednesday 13 February the Design Ventura team welcomed the top ten shortlisted schools back to the Design Museum for a special day celebrating design.

The day was kicked off by Sevra Davis, Head of Learning at the Design Museum, who was followed by two incredible presentations, one from Heather Corcoran from Kickstarter and another from surface designer Giles Miller.

The afternoon started with a career insight speed networking activity, which allowed students, teachers, family and friends to ask experts from industry about how their creative and enterprise skill have supported their successful transition into the workplace.

After tea and cake and while friends and family were visiting the galleries, the student activities continued. Students had a chance to participate in an exciting paper forms workshop led by designer Haidee Drew and a fantastic drawing workshop led by Peter Ayres from Beep Studio.

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 2018.

The event gave the students a chance to explain their innovative products to guests, network with people from the industry and be advocates for their schools. Guest were really impressed with the confidence and communication skills that the students demonstrated.

Last year’s winners Weatherhead High School presented a cheque of £1694.67 from the proceeds of their product (Petal Pot) to a representative of their chosen charity, Claire House Children’s Hospice.

The anticipated announcement of the Design Ventura 2018 awards was presented by the judges: Alice Black, Christoph Woermann and Donna Wilson.

The prizes were awarded as follows: Graveney School, Greig City Academy, Highfields School and Park House School were awarded as Outstanding Finalists; Spalding High School was awarded Commendation for Most Market Ready Product; Gillotts School was awarded Commendation for Ingenuity; and Weydon School was awarded Commendation for the Good Design. The third place was awarded to Horsforth School; second place was awarded to East Barnet School and finally the Design Ventura Winner 2018 was Simon Balle All-through School with HIT SNAP.

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition with prototypes from all ten shortlisted schools was unveiled. This year, the Design Ventura project had more than 270 schools and over 14,000 students participating. The display is up until 28 April.

The Celebration Event was about celebrating design and congratulating all those involved in the Design Ventura 2018. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Design Ventura project making it such a successful project!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

Design Ventura Pitching Event 2018

On 10 December, the Design Ventura team welcomed the top ten shortlisted schools to the Design Museum for the 2018 Pitching Event:

Each team had a chance to present their 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: Christoph Woermann, Donna Wilson, Duncan Sanders, Sebastian Conran and Heather Corcoran.

Here are all of our schools waiting with anticipation for the Pitching Event to begin.

The panel had a fantastic time watching all the presentations and questioning the students 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 and teachers took part in a fun design challenge, seeing who could create the tallest structure out of marshmallows and spaghetti.

Gillotts School 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 February when all the schools will return to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event.

All photos ©Benedict Johnson/Design Museum

Design Ventura Shortlist 2018

We are pleased to announce the top 10 entries for Design Ventura 2018.

Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. It is thanks to all of you that Design Ventura is such a huge success!

We had over 13,400 students participating, 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 international and independent school submissions 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 participation certificates for all their students by post – we will send the certificates soon.

This year’s state shortlisted schools will be contacted with further details about the Pitching event taking place on Monday 10 December at the Design Museum.

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2018

(in alphabetical order)

  
East Barnet School, London
BEEkind
A colourful card that includes a step by step guide to reviving exhausted bees.

 

    
Gillotts School, Oxfordshire
SquareStand
A wooden, flat pack stand that allows you to easily prop up a book, phone or tablet.

 

  
Graveney School, London
Button Bookmark
An adjustable bookmark that loops through your book and buttons up at the front.

 

  
Greig City Academy, London
Bamspork
A foldable bamboo spoon and fork for use on the go.

 

  
Highfields School, West Midlands
Photo Feet
A set of feet in London themed designs that hold birthday cards, photos or postcards.

 

  
Horsforth School, West Yorkshire
Clever Cogs
A playful door sign that lets people know if you are in or out of the room.

 

  
Park House School, Berkshire
Hold ’em
A shopping bag holder with a shoulder strap that gives you a helping hand when carrying multiple bags.

 

  
Simon Balle All-through School, Hertfordshire
HIT SNAP
A version of the game Snap to help children keep active. When a snap is made, the opponent must perform the exercises pictured on the card.

 

   
Spalding High School, Lincolnshire
Family Stuff Fund
A money box in the shape of a house to help children learn about saving money.

 

   
Weydon School, Surrey
A Maze Mat
A set of interlocking wooden placemats and coasters. 

 

INDEPENDENT AND OVERSEAS SCHOOLS

Schools in this category will be contacted separately and will be asked to submit a three minute video pitch.

(in alphabetical order)

  
International Community School, London
Cubic Maths
A game that helps children learn maths, three cubes make up sums to answer against an opponent.

 

  
Lady Eleanor Holles School, London
SCRATCH IT
An A6 calendar where you scratch off each day to reveal a fun design fact.

 

   
The St Michael Steiner School, London
The Copper Line
A science kit, where a battery, magnets and copper wire produce electromagnetic waves to propel a ‘train’ through a ‘tunnel’. 

Design Ventura Winning Product 2017 Petal Pot

This year’s Design Ventura winning product, Petal Pot, is a plant pot that expands as the plant grows, reducing the waste of replacing pots.

The idea created by Sanjita, Libby, Emma, Shiann from Weatherhead High School will be manufactured and sold to the public from this summer at the Design Museum Shop.

The Weatherhead High School team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products were exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

Following the Celebration Event, the team worked with the design studio  Giles Miller to develop their winning product. When developing the product they decided to make it out of Gum-tec, a material made from recycled chewing gum. This material was created by the 2017 Brief Setter, Anna Bullus the founder of Gumdrop.

Through collaborative sessions they worked together to get Petal Pot ready to be made and sold in the Design Museum Shop. The product was launched at the Design Museum Shop in 2018.

On the launch day, the team put their sales skills to the test, selling their product at the Deutsche Bank Office. 

All proceeds from the sale of Petal Pot went to the team’s chosen charity, Claire House Childrens’ Hospice. The students later visited Claire House Hospice in December 2018.