What started out as a year of hope, ended in a déjà-vu. And although many of us might find it hard to look ahead and bravely face the challenges the pandemic continues to throw at us, we must not forget: there’s still hope.
Even though it seems our governments and industry big-players are slow to move, citizens around the world are running fast. People continue taking to the streets, confronting injustice and demanding that we all do better. It’s encouraging and frankly a needed reminder: we need the people in power to make a change, but we have a responsibility to push them. I think Bruce Springsteen said it quite nicely: “you can’t start a fire without a spark.”
We’d like to be a spark of change ourselves. And although we can always do more, it’s time to reflect and celebrate the marks we leave on the world – big or small. Thank you to every single person and living thing who’s been part of our impact journey this year, we truly couldn’t do it without your engagement and continued support. We hope you’ll continue to be part of our story for many years to come.
Awarding life-improving solutions
Of course, we had to start with the biggest achievement of the year. On September 30th, we held our ninth cycle of Index Award in Copenhagen, Denmark. 46 incredible finalists tackling a variety of challenges from homelessness and sexual assault treatment to remote learning and press freedom were celebrated on the night. A huge congratulations to all of them, our six winners OUI, Flash Forest, BIOHM, Truepic, Algorithmic Justice League and LUNARK and thank you to everyone who joined us in person or online.
Discussing design 10 days in a row
We knew that this year, many of our friends, finalists and guests from all around the world wouldn’t be able to join us in person. And one night is not nearly enough to tell the incredible stories behind designing, educating and investing in design to improve life. So why not prolong the celebration? That was the idea behind our 10 Days of Design to Improve Life event series. Our most popular events in the series were the ones on Future fashion & circularity, design feedback and the perennial question: what is design?
Upping our nomination count
For this award cycle, we had a goal of reaching 2,000 nominations for the award. Not only did we achieve it, but we also surpassed it! In total, we received 2,134 nominations thanks to all of you who nominated and of course our diligent design spotters who scouted the world for great solutions. Next year, we’re hoping to receive even more nominations across countries, continents and contexts. If you want to nominate your own or someone else’s design for Index Award 2023, stay tuned! The nomination platform will open in January 2022.
Designing a new usual for businesses
This year we also launched an ambitious event series with our good friends at Designit. The pitch? An event series on designing a new business as usual and turning buzzwords into tangible action within leadership, sustainability, diversity and life-centred design. So far, we’ve hosted three out of four events, and it’s truly been a learning experience in itself, but also an inspirational journey into changing the way we do business. Our fourth event on life-centred design will be in February next year – we hope you’ll join us!
Promoting Latin American designers
In 2020, we decided to partner with Universidad del Desarollo on launching Diseño Responde: a challenge encouraging Latin American designers to develop solutions for Covid-19-related issues. We received an incredible 399 nominations and from there, our jury selected 37 finalists and five winners within each of the Index Award categories. A massive congratulations to Eu., worME, AERESOLBOX, Biodiseño en colegios and Lugün. The challenge really encouraged us at The Index Project to do something similar in other regions in the future.
Teaching design thinking in STEM
In 2021, we continued our partnership with Siemens Stiftung to implement design thinking in STEM teaching in Africa and Latin America. The goal of the partnership is to train teachers to introduce their students to creative thinking and problem-solving as part of the developing skills fit for the 21st century. And so, Our Education Director Charlotte and our Head of Future Thinking and Special Projects Mariano hosted online workshops for teachers in Peru and Mexico across the year.
Showing stories of impact
At The Index Project, we thrive in celebrating and highlighting the people who drive impact around the world. That’s why the Impact Stories series, which was kindly sponsored by Laerdal Global Health, is one of our proudest achievements in the previous year. In total, we’ve released 12 videos which to date have over 320.000 views on our social media channels.
Launching our second investment fund
Speaking of driving impact, we set out to continue investing in the incredible Index Award pipeline. So far, our first fund invested in 12 impact companies, including Seaborg Technologies, Zipline and CanopyLAB. And in September 2021, we announced that the Design to Improve Life Fund II closed a €1M funding round as well as invested into four companies: CATALOG, ExSeed Health, Mimica Lab & Spot.
Talking about design innovation
Our podcast ‘Can Design Save Us?’ continues to be our little playful hub of highlighting future challenges and the designs and designers working to solve them. This year alone, we released 11 episodes on topics ranging from nuclear energy to digital fashion, from data doomsday to the power of smell. And although the podcast is now on hold, we’re hoping to return with even more episodes in the coming year.
Looking to 2022
Next year might not be an award year, but it sure is a special one for The Index Project. In 2022, we’ll be able to celebrate our 20 year anniversary and therefore 20 years of celebrating and mobilising design to improve life. How? That’s still in the works. But there are many ways for you to keep updated on our future endeavours. Follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Clubhouse and sign up for our newsletter for a monthly update on our work and community events.
