We’re delighted to announce that Jude Pullen will be a judge for our V&A Innovate National Schools Challenge 2024 – 25.

Jude Pullen is a Creative Technologist who is one of the eight featured inventors in BBC Two’s Big Life Fix documentary series that helps people with disabilities through technology and design.

As Head of R&D and Technology at London start-up Sugru, Jude led groundbreaking new patented ‘child-safe’ formulations. As a Senior Manager at LEGO®, he travelled the world looking for opportunities to expand play for kids (and big kids).

We spoke to Jude about being on the panel and why design is important to him.

What are you most looking forward to as a V&A Innovate judge, and why?

I work in Tech and Industrial Futures. People often ask me where I get such great insights from – and my ‘secret’ is ‘listening to what kids think’! This is a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy, in that what a 10-year-old believes today, will become part of their employment in 8 years’ time, and they may well be my boss or client in no time at all. Even if their ideas might be ‘blunted by reality’ and there will be many failures, the trends remain vivid and potent.

It remains up for debate which will be the dominant ‘green energy’ in 2050, let’s say, but what is not in debate is that this young generation will initiate a green energy revolution, with their minds, jobs, innovations and education. So I quite literally ‘see the future’ in these young people – they will become it. They are also just really fun to hang out with, and inspire me, so who wouldn’t want to engage with them in this ‘job’ as a judge?!

What do this year’s themes of Transform, Celebrate and Belong mean to you?

These themes feel ‘youthful, urgent and progressive’ – something young people do not have much trouble being by default. Education policy arguably hasn’t fully delivered on the championing of ‘creativity, innovation and resilience. Less value has been given to subjects like D&T, Arts and Humanities, because they don’t have an easy 1+1=2 formula of attainment. Industry does not favour rote-learning – with no lateral thinking capability, and we see a backlash against STEM – precisely because it omits the ‘Arts’ (lateral thinking by nature) to really teach STEAM!

When you look at these themes for this year, they embody much of what our country needs to operate on a global stage, and to be leaders in ethical growth and to discover new values beyond consumption and consumerism.

Technology, Design, Engineering, Science – these are of course powerful tools, but it is often the Arts that give them meaning and application. These themes evidently speak to that consciousness of choice in what we do next in our evolution as societies and as part of nature.

Why is design important to you?

Design for me is a ‘bridge’ between the Arts, Sciences and Engineering. It is able to not just make tools but define why they are needed in the first place. Arts alone can be too abstract or pretentious to apply directly to industry, but conversely, Science and Engineering can be dangerously blinkered when applied in haste without philosophical or ethical thinking.

“Move Fast and Break Stuff” was the battle-cry of many startups – and I see it as an antithesis of where we need to think more about our actions. I love working at the ‘bleeding edge’ of Tech and Innovation, but as thrilling as this sounds, we need to ask more “who or what is being ‘cut’?” This is what I think the best of Design does – it is not afraid to ask the tough questions, in the pursuit of progress.

I am no Luddite, but I think we need to have more humanity in what we design, and not dismiss children’s care and compassion as mere ‘naivete’. We have to redress the balance and not only consider the short-term gains, but our long term prosperity on many levels. Despite the current state of the Design Curriculum in the UK, it is perhaps the only subject that one can call ‘Interdisciplinary’. If you ask Industry what it needs more of – it is precisely what Design embodies.

Design is a verb, a mindset, and a way to affect change – hopefully for the better.

What invention / innovation could you not live without?

 Originally, I trained in Chemistry. I found it incredibly dull, the way it was taught, despite loving that it opened up the world of elements, microscopic and atomic interactions for me. Despite retraining in Design, which I find more Renaissance-like, I’ve never lost the gift of that first degree to ‘look deeper’ – down to even the atomic level, and then zoom out to the ‘bigger picture’.

So this ‘zoom in / out’ ethos is why I would say – the Biro Pen – is possibly my favourite invention: On a micro level, it is actually mind-bending how well engineered it is to make a smooth line with a perfect ball, in a device which costs perhaps fractions of a penny to make! This is ‘precision engineering’ for almost nothing. And yet, in some places in the world, a child cannot attend a school, without having a pen to write with. Something so seemingly ubiquitous and cheap, is not universally distributed. And yet we all know that the power of economies starts with the act of taking an idea out of our head, and onto paper, usually using a pen, so that another person can say ‘oh, I see what you mean now’ – this is the foundation of all innovation, discourse, and perhaps I would venture – modern culture and humanity. I can’t think of many other things, perhaps other than fire, which are this world-changing. Even with the giddy enthusiasm of AI, and Computers, most ideas still often begin with a pen and paper, right?!

If you can write it or draw it, you can share it, and it can endure – and if someone else can understand it, you have momentum… with that anything is possible.

Can you share any top tips for students taking part in V&A Innovate this year?

Step back from your computer!

To be clear, I am not anti-tech, I love it, but I have created teaching materials with teachers for primary and secondary schools, taught at universities, worked with, and mentored startups, led teams in international corporations – and the biggest red flag is if people spend too much time in front of a computer, and not enough time building, testing and redesigning it in real life.

If you’re not engaging your idea in reality, it’s not real! It matters not if this is a phrase written down, a sketch drawn, a prototype cobbled together, or an app that is in early development – it only has impact if it’s a 2-way discussion, if it exists outside of your head. You cannot tell if your idea matters to other people if you cannot interact with them directly. If a picture says 1000 words, and a video says 1000 pictures, then surely a prototype (physical or digital) that one can interact with is much more engaging and you can learn – and hence progress – more with any given idea.

Our education system is now teaching students that a ‘pretty rendering’ is enough to stop designing, (is it because it no longer has the grit to teach prototyping and user testing?), that some code that ‘gives the correct answer’ is ‘job well done’, (because it lacks the humanity to question ‘what is correct’? is not singular to just one group), that an essay that regurgitates all the ‘expected and known points’ is more valued than a new way of seeing things.

Anything worth doing is unfamiliar and a bit problematic at first, this is precisely why we need to explore ideas in a ‘hands-on / minds-on’ way. We need ideas to exist beyond our heads to be fully understood, criticised and evolved into something better – to realise their potential. We may be getting too comfortable with ‘safe’ ideas which we don’t test in reality.

They say ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’, and I would say if we don’t have the confidence to examine things through designing, discussing and developing, then I’m not sure we are really learning anything worthwhile. The optimistic part of all of this, is that once you understand that everything exciting in life started from humble, and often messy beginnings, it is less daunting to realise that anyone can make a difference.

The trick is to actually ‘make’ it, not just think/talk about it. Action speaks louder than words. Education – and indeed Society – needs more Action.

V&A Innovate judge’s advice

This short film is focussed on the initial phase of the Innovate competition called COLLECT. The COLLECT phase is when students gather ideas to understand what a human-centred design process is. 

In this film, Jude visits the V&A South Kensington Design galleries and focuses on some brilliant designs that were created as solutions to real-world problems. He shares some tips and insights for how students can collect ideas and inspiration for their Innovate designs.

Register to take part in Innovate 2024 – 25

Could your students design with empathy and challenge the status quo? Register to take part on the V&A Innovate webpage and enter your students’ ideas by 10 January 2025.

V&A Innovate is the V&A’s annual National Schools Challenge offering students in years 7, 8 and 9 the opportunity to design a solution to a real-world problem inspired by the V&A’s collections.