Partner with the RSA Student Design Awards
We are the RSA.
We are a mission-led social change organisation.
We work with people, communities, organisations and ecosystems to grow a better world today and for future generations.
The RSA has a long heritage of design that underpins the way we create change and deliver social impact, including our Student Design Awards.
The RSA Student Design Awards are the world's oldest, most pioneering student design competition.
Since 1924, RSA Student Design Awards' participants have risen to the challenges of their times. Every year, we invite designers and students from across the globe to apply their skills and creativity to tackle today’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.
Each year we look for partners who put social impact at the core of their business to co-create briefs that address big social and environmental issues.
Benefits to our partners
- Access and attract the best new talent aligned with your mission, whilst helping build a more diverse generation of socially-driven designers.
- Promote our social purpose and organisational vision as a recognised RSA partner, through a co-designed brief, promoted across the RSA’s networks and platforms including 30k changemakers.
- Champion open innovation and positive change by supporting emerging designers, collaborating on challenges that affect you, and highlighting the role of design and innovation in addressing these complex challenges.
It was a pleasure to be involved in the RSA Student Design Awards. We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity present across all of the entries. There were a wide range of highly innovative proposals, and we look forward to seeing how they evolve in the months and years to come
Impact and Innovation
Many SDA winners and shortlisted students credit the awards with shifting their perspectives, setting them on new paths and giving them the start they needed to launch their careers. Partners have access to exciting, emerging talent, and the opportunity to shape and incubate pioneering new ideas, design and products that deliver real change.
Past winners include internationally acclaimed fashion designer Betty Jackson (1970), Designer of the iPhone and iMac Jony Ive (1988/89), and GOV.UK mastermind Ben Terrett (1997).
The Student Design Awards definitely helped my career. I think it’s easy for people to say that but I remember when that first Creative Director that hired me said ‘We hired you because you had won that award’ - that is a very tangible reason.
