Helen Hamlyn Design Awards
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The annual Helen Hamlyn Design Awards recognise creativity in people-centred, inclusive design across all disciplines of the College and celebrate the most visionary, inclusive and innovative RCA graduate projects.
Helen Hamlyn Design Awards 2022
The 2022 Helen Hamlyn Design Awards are open to all RCA MA or MRes graduates who have either graduated on 17 February 2022, or who are due to graduate on 27 June 2022.
The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design is home to inclusive design. Under this umbrella, we have four separate research spaces: Age and Diversity, Healthcare, Inclusive Design for Social Impact and Inclusive Design for Business Impact.
This year, we will be awarding prizes across the themes of social impact, inclusive technology, systems and design and creativity: themes that relate directly to our research spaces. The Helen Hamlyn Design Awards programme is especially interested in projects that evidence people-centred design by involving people as part of the design process. We are also interested in projects that creatively champion all aspects of inclusive design.
- The Helen Hamlyn Award for Creativity: Prize of £2,000
- The Snowden Award for Disability: Prize of £2,000
- The Northumbrian Water Award for Inclusive Innovation: Prize of £2,000
- MindRheo's Award for Best Systems Design Approach to Complex Societal Problems: Prize of £2,000
- Sure Award for Inclusive Products: Prize of £2,000
- Global Disability Innovation Hub and Heart n Soul Award for Access: Prize of £2,000
- TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) Award for Digital Inclusion: Prize of £2,000
Judging criteria
The judging panel will consider each submission’s alignment with the following criteria:
- Evidence of a real issue or problem
- Demonstrates innovation in the area
- Involves people in the design process
- Demonstrates inclusivity and meaningful engagement
- Describes potential benefit (s) for people and beyond
- Reflect upon the challenges of the project and how it could be improved.
Application process and timelines
Timeline
- Monday 23 May – application platform opens
- Tuesday 14 June, 11.59pm – application deadline
- Thursday 22 June – shortlisted applicants will be notified. (Applicants will need to prepare a five-minute presentation for an online interview)
- Friday 24 June (tbc) – online interview for shortlisted applicants
- Monday 27 June – winners will be notified
- Wednesday 29 June 2022 (5–6.15pm) – the Awards will be presented in person at an evening ceremony at the RCA, Battersea campus. Winners will be expected to prepare a 1 minute video about their project which will be shown during the Awards Ceremony and used in The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design communications.
Please send any related queries to [email protected]
2022 Award Sponsors
The Helen Hamlyn Trust is an independent grant-making Trust. The trust initiates medium and long-term major projects linked to the shared interests of Lady Hamlyn and her late husband Lord Hamlyn. Its core ethos is to develop innovative projects, which aim to effect lasting change, improve quality of life and create opportunity for the benefit of the public.
Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub)
The GDI Hub was born out of the legacy of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, held a stone’s throw from the Hub’s future home at UCL East. It brings together partners with world-leading specialisms in disability: UCL; Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; UAL: London College of Fashion; Loughborough University London; Leonard Cheshire; V&A; Sadler’s Wells; and The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design.
Heart n Soul at The Hub was a research project led by the creative arts organisation Heart n Soul. We were funded by Wellcome’s Hub Award to bring a group of very different people together to do research in new and exciting ways.
MindRheo works closely with clients to improve their business effectiveness and impact by designing creative solutions and processes informed by evidence-based neuroscience. Their programmes and products are aimed at constructing mindset, changing behaviour, and expanding delivery-related skills and capacities necessary to shape the future from the current environment of complex push and pull factors.
Northumbrian Water Limited is a water company in the United Kingdom, providing mains water and sewerage services in the English counties of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and parts of North Yorkshire, and also supplying water as Essex and Suffolk Water. Their vision is to be the national leader in the provision of sustainable water and waste water services.
The Snowdon Trust is a charity that assists physically and sensory disabled people to access vocational and academic courses in the UK by awarding grants. Since 1981 the Trust has given grants of over £3.5 million to help more than 2,500 people achieve qualifications and futures that might otherwise not have been possible.
Sure Deodorant, also known as Rexona and Degree, is the world’s number 1 anti perspirant. We believe in the power of movement to transform lives. Everyone should be able to experience the incredible physical, mental and social benefits that movement provides, whoever you are, and however you move. Yet it is not a level playing field. We want to remove the barriers to movement, so that everyone, regardless of ability, can find the confidence to break their limits.
TATA Consultancy Services (TCS)
TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) is a global leader in IT services, consulting & business solutions with a large network of innovation & delivery centers. TCS combines tech expertise and business intelligence to catalyze change and deliver results.
Previous Award Winners
The Helen Hamlyn Award for Creativity 2021: Spaces of Spillages: Rethinking Jakarta's High-rise Social Housings, Jessica Tiffany Hindradjaja
- Awards 2021 winning projects and runners up and The Helen Hamlyn Design Awards 2021 Ceremony
- Awards 2020 winning projects and shortlist
- Awards 2018 and winning projects
- Awards 2017 and winning projects
- Awards 2016 and winning projects
- Awards 2015 and winning projects
- Awards 2014 and winning projects
- Awards 2013 and winning projects
- Awards 2012 and winning projects
- Awards 2011 and winning projects
- Awards 2010 and winning projects
- Awards 2009 and winning projects
Design for our Future Selves Awards
The Design for our Future Selves Awards scheme ran at the Royal College of Art from 2000 to 2008. It aimed to encourage inclusive design projects from graduating RCA students that were responsive to human behaviour and based on real insight into social need. The awards grew out of the DesignAge Competition, which ran from 1992 to 1999, addressing the needs and aspirations of older people.
- Awards 2008 and winning projects
- Awards 2007 and winning projects