As I write this, the election is less than 24 hours away. Regardless of the outcome, you would be forgiven for wondering if some of the challenges discussed in the campaign are insurmountable. After all, no amount of policy from a single country will stop us from exceeding the Paris Agreement global heating target of 2°, or reverse the mistreatment and pollution of our waterways. What if I were to tell you less than a 15-minute walk from the Houses of Parliament, there is a building where solutions to all these problems are being created?
The Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) could just as easily be the radical society for the arts. Even if you’ve never heard of the RSA, I can guarantee its members will have had some impact on your life. Have you ever used a Stanley knife, owned a laptop, or even walked past a blue plaque on a historic building, perhaps while listening to an iPod? All of these innovations were created by RSA members.
Whereas politicians wait for perceptions to present changes as necessities, the RSA champions the idea of making a change, then waits for perceptions to catch up. Perhaps it’s ironic then that one of its most famous former fellows, Benjamin Franklin, helped to create the very policy-driven politics that the modern RSA is outstripping.
The RSA celebrates a hundred years of its student design awards this year. Knowing something of the history of these awards, when I was invited to attend I was curious to see what ideas would come out of a generation for which technological innovation has become so familiar that it may have lost its novelty.
The answer was provided perfectly by, Jesvin Yeo, one of this year’s judges:
“It is wonderful to know that through this brief, students are broadening their worldview and realising that design isn’t just for commercial use but can be used to impact the greater good!”
Blake Goodwin and the team behind PYRI reasoned that if global heating is going to affect us all, we should be better prepared for its consequences. They took inspiration from heat-sensitive plants, like the pinecone, to design an affordable and accessible wildfire early warning system. I would say more, but the technology behind it is so burning hot the patent is still pending.
Perhaps you are more concerned about polluted water. So was Dougal Cusack Brown, an interior design student from Kingston University. He turned an old shed in the Chatham Dockyard into an idea for harnessing the natural filtering power of mussels to simultaneously clean the water of pollutants and provide a tasty snack. Brown’s vision encapsulates what the student awards are trying to do. In the words of conservation expert Paulette McAllister in judging the flourishing places category:
“They have so many more global factors pulling on them. Connection with place and community was the antithesis to the information overload they have. They’re so connected to the environment because they know they need it.”
Dougal was able to combine his experience in a cooking tent in Glastonbury, his interior design knowledge and the childhood influences of the community through food projects in the small Somerset town of Froom into an innovative climate solution.
Taking inspiration from their own personal situations to solve problems we all consider crises, is a theme this year Abhipsha Ray turned her talents to solving problems closer to home. She designed an app inspired by her own life growing up in a multigenerational household. Balance collates and coordinates information between caregivers and the elderly, transcribing voice notes to create a personalised connection between the elderly and their caregiver. This information can then be shared with a wider community of carers and academics, connecting what would have been isolated situations to create a more caring culture.
In her words, “No act is too small. People consider eldercare to be task-specific jobs, but it has a lot to do with emotional and social well-being.”
The RSA is bridging the gap between community design ideas and global problems to enable people like Dougal to expand their scope.
Each new generation comes with a different vision of the world we live in. The RSA understands that vision alone does not move you are a gameyou are you areare youmountains, but with the right encouragement, the winners of this year’s awards may go on to build them, just as this year’s keynote speaker, Andrew Grant, did when designing the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.
Not content with fostering innovation in others, the RSA is now innovating itself. They have recognised that diverse perspectives are not exclusively the preserve of new generations. The new concept that is replacing the student awards, RSA Spark, opens up the briefs to all types of people, ranging from people aged 11 to 111. It recognises that one in three people leave school feeling that they’re not good learners. Far from being a barrier to knowledge, this might just indicate a talent for out-of-the-box thinking that was never recognised in the box formal education.
So often, the spark of inspiration that can solve a global problem is found within the community where that problem is most keenly felt. The RSA will continue to fund these sparks into flames to effect change hopefully for the next hundred years.
By Harry Smith, ADJ CFJ Student
Harry was chosen by the Academy for Disabled Journalists to cover the Design for Life Awards event at the RSA in London on 8th July, 2024 after an invite from the Royal Society of Arts.