Design student shortlisted for Sports Technology Award

The Sports Technology Awards (STAs) are dedicated to championing and celebrating innovative and inspiring advances in sports technology.

Nominees across the 20 categories include Barclaycard, Jaguar, O2, Chelsea Football Club and BBC Sport.

MA Design student James Searle’s design for a seat for disabled rowers has been shortlisted for the Sports Technology Design Challenge, a new award, jointly created by Sport England, which aims to get more young people, women or disabled athletes involved in sport.

James, who is nominated under his company JAS Product Design, is a rower himself and realised there was a gap in the availability of equipment for disabled rowers.

He said: “I saw an opportunity to make the sport more accessible and went with it. We’re now trying to decrease the cost as the cheaper the seat, the more accessible it is. I hope to increase participation in the sport.

“I’m really excited about the ceremony and it’s great to be shortlisted, I’m hoping that something will come from it. It’s a chance to get some extra publicity and for more people to see my design too.”

Other nominees in his category include Stockton Borough Council’s Funky Feet project which provides games and dancing sessions for preschool aged children, Sportarian, a sports social platform that connects sportspeople with sports coaches and Shot Scope which creates wearable technology for sportspeople to use in performance tracking and data collection.

Rebecca Hopkins, director of the Sports Technology Awards, said: “The power of sports technology as a force for change isn’t just the preserve of established sportsmen and women, these innovations encourage all sorts of people to do more in sport, not least of all to start doing more physically – which is especially pertinent given the recent news about the importance of activity.”

The awards ceremony will be held in central London on Friday 27 March.