The Design Museum Announces the 2021-22 Design Ventura Shortlist for its Design and Enterprise Competition

Over 110 schools from across the UK and internationally took part in the 12th edition of Design Ventura, the Design Museum and Deutsche Bank’s design and enterprise competition for students aged 13-16.

Students responded to a brief set by award-winning sound artist, designer and Partner at Pentagram, Yuri Suzuki to design a new product for the Design Museum Shop.

The 10 shortlisted teams will have the opportunity to pitch their design concepts to a panel of design and business professionals at Deutsche Bank’s head office in London.

The winning team will then be announced at a celebration event at the Design Museum, with their winning idea going on sale in the Design Museum Shop later in the year.

A flagship partnership within Deutsche Bank’s global Corporate Social Responsibility Born to Be youth engagement programme, Design Ventura offers students an opportunity to build vital design skills, and handson experience developing a product and taking it to market.

The shortlisted teams have all designed products which respond to the brief to improve everyday life by addressing a social, educational or environmental issue and retails for around £15. The shortlisted entries in alphabetical order include:

• County Upper School, Suffolk,

Sunny London - a fun children’s craft kit to create stained glass windows featuring great British design icons

• Cambourne Village College,

Cambridge, Eco Seed - a product which allows users to grow seeds and watch them germinate.

• Ferndown Upper School, Dorset,

The Flippy Book - a flip-book that mixes and matches iconic designs letting the user explore their creativity • Liverpool Blue Coat School,

Liverpool, Designosaur - a dinosaur shaped buildable and customisable plant pot to grow herbs

• Orleans Park School, London, The

Sturdy Stabiliser - portable and reusable pads to fix wobbly chairs and tables legs

• Prendergast Ladywell School,

London, Grow Your Story - a biodegradable fairytale storybook and plant kit

• Salford City Academy, Manchester,

Tongue Twister Game - a card game with alliterative phrases challenging the players to pronounce individual words

• South Wilts Grammar School,

Wiltshire, Gender Jigsaw - jigsaw pieces with preferred pronouns to be worn on your clothing

• The Piggott School, Berkshire,

Corky - a quirky pineapple soft toy made of cork, bamboo and felt • Tiffin School, London, Drummable - a DIY cardboard drum-kit creating a wide range of textures and sounds American Community

School, Soaprise - a soap with a surprise toy hidden inside to encourage children to wash their hands

Shortlist for Independent and International School Category:

• American Community School,

Amman, Soaprise - a soap with a surprise toy hidden inside to encourage children to wash their hands

• St. Andrew International School,

Bangkok, Dino Plant - a recycled seed paper-based origami set which grows plants once completed • Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School,

Crosby, RMP: Recycled Music

Products - stylish and chic jewellery made of old vinyl records

The shortlisted teams were chosen by a panel of leading professionals from the world of business and design. The teams will now be invited to attend a pitching event to test their entrepreneurial skills in front of a panel of judges including Yuri Suzuki, Sound Artist and Designer and Design Ventura 2021-22 brief setter; Rosa Bertoli, Design Editor at Wallpaper; Sebastian Conran, Designer and Trustee at the Design Museum; Preena Patel, Merchandising Manager at the Design Museum; and Christoph Woermann, Global Head of Corporate Bank Marketing at Deutsche Bank.

“I loved seeing the work that has been produced - the research, ideas and level of presentation were impressive and inspiring. There are some very promising concepts.” Sam

Griffiths, designer and founder of Griffics, Shortlisting Judge, Design Ventura 2021-22.

Website: ventura.designmuseum.org

I @Design_Ventura @designmuseum

T @DesignVentura @designmuseum

F Design Ventura

Link to purchase Design Ventura 2019 Winning Product, Grow Wild:

designmuseumshop.com/ products/grow-wild

Johnny Recruit By Theo Behe and Thomas Muzzell

Johnny Recruit by Theo Behe and Thomas Muzzell, available on all online book stores on May 30th. Available for pre-order from Amazon on May 15th.

A 14-year-old landing a publishing deal with a top UK comics title? A story inspired by a WW2 DCF pilot with over a dozen Nazi kills - the writer a direct dessendent of the RAF ace? A graphic novel containing only double-page spreads and no words emulating German and Allied propaganda posters used to encourage soldier enlistment? Here is a curiosity worth checking out.

Johnny Recruit is a Markosia graphic novel written by

English Year 9 student Theo Behe and illustrated by

Canadian artist Thomas Muzzell. Released on May 30th, the story follow 14-year-old Big Johnny who lies about being 18 and joins WW2 to rescue his favourite uncle Bert - who’s been imprisoned by Nazis deep inside Germany. In his quest he goes to head to head with posh alpha male pilot Billy who threatens to expose Johnny’s secret - leaving the youngster with tough decisions no kid should have to face.

It’s quite remarkable Markosia will publish a young teenager’s comic based on a project he first submitted back in primary school. But like any release from a reputable comics publisher, I wanted to find out if Johnny Recruit was actually any good? And it is quite good indeed.

We meet man-boy Johnny, a church-going, hockey card loving teen from rural Manitoulin Island, Canada. Physically dominant in ice hockey, at 14 he has mastered moose hunting from bush planes from his best friend uncle Bert. So Johnny doesn’t think twice about enlisting into WW2 to find Bert after learning he’s been held captive by Nazis. Strong, confident, persistent, an expert shot and top-class flying skills means he excels in boot camp. And he soon gains big credibility in the ranks after saving fellow troops in Operation Jubilee - a notorious test-run for the D-Day landing where over 900 (mostly Canadian) soldiers were slaughtered on Dieppe beach in 1942.

Johnny is a real hero of his era. Unlike popular fantasy teen novel heroes like Alex Rider or Artemis Fowl, Johnny’s adventures are believable because he relies on the limited tools and technology available to him at the time to get in and out of trouble. And although excellent luck usually favours the exceptional - his heroics certainly don’t impress Billy, a pompous pilot keen to thwart his efforts. Even in a bloody war against facist Germans an enemy can lurk within.

Johnny Recruit isn’t a tale lamenting lives lost, the peripheral impact of battle, or the tragedy of blindly following duty for one’s country - but rather it’s a story of love for family.

And the book’s young writer was inspired by a family hero of his own - his RAF flying ace Uncle Albert Houle who was awarded two distinguished flying cross for shooting down 13½ Nazis (½ Nazi means two pilots killed them by the way). So in Behe we seem to have a teen so taken

by his great uncle’s achievements he couldn’t help but write himself into a new (semi-fictional) version of his story. Just as Johnny wants to find his favourite uncle, Behe writes himself into the story because he wants to be part of his favourite uncle’s adventures. We’ve all imagined hanging with our heroes - and quite often they’re family members we idolised (and idealised) in our youth.

Artist Thomas Muzzell’s double page spreads are excellent. His fine inks vividly bring the Behe’s story to life - such that I wanted to re-read this comic twice to take it in properly. One can quietly and patiently spend minutes soaking up each landscape - almost like cinematic freeze-frames - allowing the imagination to build up preceding minutes of action leading up to that exact moment in the story. There are work-in-progress videos on Behe’s social account that show the meticulous detail that went into each page. The artist is clearly comfortable with vast scenic backgrounds and he matures Johnny nicely as the teen makes his boy-to-man journey from innocence to experience. But it’s Muzzell’s secondary characters who steal the show: the joyous pub-dwellers, weathered dockside fishermen, battle-jaded pilots. This project has many nice surprises - but perhaps none bigger than learning the 64-year-old artist only really went fulltime into comics after his retirement.

The comic is dialogue-free and each page is (very appropriately) reminiscent of a WW2 propaganda poster or comic cover - back when it cost kids only 10 cents to find out how Superman could kill Adolf Hitler. By signing up to go head-to-head versus the Nazi war machine, one first wonders if Johnny was being brave - or maybe he’s simply a reckless kid. But then we learn that thousands of underaged kids joined WW2 - the youngest a certain Tom Dobney who became an RAF pilot at 14, and only caught out when his father spotted a newspaper photo of him shaking hands with the King. Such influential comic covers - that no doubt encouraged 40s kids to sign-up - aren’t really so different to the social media propaganda luring thousands of child soldiers into global wars today.

With Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg soon coming out with new big-budget WW2 productions, Behe might have timed his Johnny Recruit adventure into the hero comic wars quite nicely indeed. I recommend Johnny Recruit to people who enjoy historical action comics with something to say about fighting for family - and perhaps something more to say about our world that still lets kids fight in wars today.

DISCOVER MORE ABOUT JOHNNY RECRUIT: www.contrabandgraphicnovel.com/johnnyrecruit

QA&

THEO BEHE

How did your great Uncle Bert inspire you?

When I first heard Bert’s WW2 stories I got so excited. An ace who shot down 13 German planes - and he even got shot in the neck himself. He made our family proud and so I really wanted to write some fun adventures around him - create new heroes that might match up to what he did. I can understand why kids back in 1940 would love stories like this too, and why they would make them want to go and fight in the war.

Johnny Recruit is in Canada, England, France, Germany and Switzerland - have you been to these places?

I’ve been to all the locations in the book. My family likes to travel - we visited Juno Beach just after the first lockdown. And I’ve been all over the UK playing football. In the summers I go to Canada - and this country has probably influenced the book the most. The landscapes at the beginning are from Northern Ontario near Georgian Bay. It helps that Tom is from Ontario Canada also - he knows what it’s like there. The bush plane landing on the dock early in the book comes from watching them come on Trout Lake. So is the page where Johnny is playing ice hockey in winter time - after the snow is scraped off when the lake freezes over. What have you learned from writing Johnny Recruit?

From doing the comic, my planning and creativity skills have really improved which will help me in school for the next few years. I learnt that you have to start first with the structure of the story and make sure you have the plot. Being patient is really key. You shouldn’t get worried about the little details and ideas not coming to you right away. For all the pages they eventually all came to me. The PR part is also an exciting new thing to learn about. Social media is such a big platform for promotion. So is being in the newspaper!

Why did you call the book Johnny Recruit?

“Johnny Recruit” was a term used by troops to call out inexperienced soldiers new to the war. Even Camel cigarettes ran a big ad campaign around the term. We did talk about different options: Johnny Canada, Johnny Conscript - and even Johnny Dieppe because of Operation Jubilee - but that sounded too much like a famous and (somewhat disgraced) actor!

WILD SWIMMING WALKS

LAKE DISTRICT: 28 lake, river and waterfall days out

BY PETE KELLY

Wild Swimming Walks Lake District: 28 lake, river and waterfall days out by Pete Kelly ISBN: 9781910636336 Available 2nd May 2022 from www.wildthingspublishing.com RRP £14.99

Wild Swimming Walks leads you on 28 adventures in the captivating landscape of the Lake District. Find secret waterfalls, pristine mountain tarns and sparkling rivers.

Complete with photos and practical guidance, rich in local history and legend, this book will appeal to wild swimmers, family explorers, nature lovers and walkers alike. • Discover beautiful pools below the highest waterfall in Cumbria • Swim around the islands of Ullswater and into the Devil’s Chimney • Bathe in the deepest tarn in the

Lakes beneath the towering crags of

Mardale • Explore the craggy highs and the watery lows of Scafell Pike from the wonderful Eskdale Valley • Seek the legendary talking fish of

Bowscale Tarn Including detailed directions, maps and downloadable route information to print out or take with you on your phone or tablet ABOUT THE AUTHOR Pete Kelly was brought up in northern England and learnt to swim in the tidal pools of Northumbria. He now lives in Ambleside with his wife Andrea and son William. Together they founded Swim the Lakes in 2005, pioneering guided adventure swimming. Pete has appeared on BBC Countryfile and Secret Britain and writes for Outdoor Swimmer Magazine.