Pentagram London welcomes Stanley Anigbogu
As part of the Young Climate Prize, Pentagram has partnered with The World Around to mentor the emerging Nigerian designer.
Founded by The World Around, the Young Climate Prize is a biannual hybrid award and mentorship programme. The prize aims to amplify and accelerate the impact of global climate-change focused projects by pairing 25 young climate leaders (all under 25 years old) with a mentor from the global design and architecture community. Three winners are flown to New York City to share their work and ideas at the Guggenheim Museum at The World Around’s annual Summit.
Stanley Anigbogu is an emerging designer from Nigeria who is currently studying at the African Leadership University in Rwanda. Stanley has created a system called LightEd that recycles e-waste and combines it with locally sourced materials to make solar-powered lighting solutions. LightEd’s programme ‘The Light for Peace’ has already provided over 22,000 internally displaced refugees and 500 students with clean energy sources, replacing kerosene lamps and candles.
This access to consistent light has huge social and economic benefits: enabling students to extend their working hours, small business owners to lengthen their trading hours, and making rural areas more safe and accessible.
Stanley was mentored by Pentagram Partners Harry Pearce and Jon Marshall. Harry helped Stanley tell the fascinating story behind his product and gave him advice on the best way to present it to the market. Stanley was also invited to spend a month working alongside Jon and his team at Pentagram’s London office. While Stanley is an accomplished inventor, he learned from Jon and his team about the process of industrial design and how to craft objects for mass production. One of the highlights was a presentation Stanley did about growing up as an inventor and designer and the background to the LightEd project.
Harry Pearce comments: “Working with Stanley these last months has been a real inspiration. Not only has he shown us his creativity and brilliant insights, he has been able to listen and take on board our thoughts and help positively. Clearly, he has many, many wonderful ideas beyond the ‘LightEd’ project and he seems unstoppable in his energy and positivity.”
Jon Marshall adds: ‘’It’s been a real pleasure to mentor Stanley, his enthusiasm and creativity is infectious. What he’s achieved with the LightEd project has been remarkable. I’ve been impressed by how he has brought all this thinking together into a manufacturable design at the same time as identifying parallel ideas for future development. I’m sure he will continue to achieve great things for himself and those around him.”
Stanley’s ideas, energy and enthusiasm brought a new dynamic to the team at Pentagram, and we are all looking forward to collaborating with him on future projects.
