Design directions awards
Design Directions awards
The RSA Design Directions scheme posed a set of diverse design challenges to students in 2009.
Co-design of services formed a key part of the briefs for the scheme, several in particular challenged students to propose services that responded to specific social needs.
The Action for Age brief had a stupendous line-up of finalists. The three winning proposals, addressing the social isolation and loneliness of older people, were:
1) A service in which young people both refurbish used computers for use by older people and coach their seniors in how to use them.
2) A hub that brings together society’s two most isolated groups: older people and new parents.
3) A network employing senior community members as messengers and mediators.
Andrew Barnett, Director of the Gulbenkian Foundation in the UK and jury member for the award declared that “social innovation is what’s been happening in this very room, this morning”, while Lord Best, chair of the jury said "We've really seen how design helps articulate the vision of a partnership, giving visual form to the relationships between diverse interests and groups”.
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