GLASGOW.- Sarah Drummond from Edinburgh and a Glasgow School of Art (GSA) Product Design graduate, has won a national service design award for her innovative ideas to improve the relationship between the police and the public. Mypolice is an idea for a website where members of the public can give feedback, express thanks or tell their story about their experiences with the police and offer suggestions for improvements. In doing so an otherwise alienating procedure is focused upon the member of the public concerned and their experience as a victim of crime is made central to the process.

Her award came from the Social Innovation Camp Weekend held in Glasgow from 19th-21st June 2009. The Social Innovation Camp aims to help turn ideas for web tools into a means to transform the everyday world through real social start-ups. There were about 130 ideas in total from the weekend and Sarah’s plus five others were picked to go forward. Sarah and her team won £5000, free branding workshops and 6 months of PR to get the idea off the ground.

This award comes a couple of weeks after Sarah’s degree show work won The Glasgow School of Art’s inaugural Medici Prize for Service Design, the world’s first award dedicated to excellence and innovation in service design and delivery by undergraduate students. Her winning project entitled PO Box was the design of a post service that allows rural communities who have lost their post office to access it. The box moves around with the royal mail van and is run by locals in a village hall therefore bringing community spirit back in one central location/hub.

Dr Gordon Hush, Head of Product Design at GSA, said: “I’m really pleased for Sarah and firmly believe she is a design star in the making. That we are developing students of such a high calibre is also a real mark of progress for the Product Design department and The Glasgow School of Art.”