Judging Awards - What We Choose to Notice

This reflection emerged from serving as a judge for awards including the Games for Change Awards, the Hollywood Climate Summit Awards, and the SMARTIES Awards, amongst others.

Each of these awards has its own rhythm — different portals, categories, rules. But the feeling underneath tends to repeat: a screen full of buffering assets / games, PDFs I'm actually reading properly, entries from people I'll likely never meet.

Games sitting next to campaigns. Entries from studios with decades behind them, next to first attempts from students still working out what they want to say. Different formats, criteria, communities — and somehow, always, something worth paying attention to.

Each experience draws me to reflect upon what kind of present — and future — are we choosing to recognise?

People often imagine judging as a process of ranking. Reading, playing, scoring, noting, moving on.

There is certainly some of that.

There is also the guidelines and categories we are asked to judge against.

And then there is everything else that pops up in my brain, as an individual, a member of society, a human being.

What is this trying to do? What might someone feel after spending time with it?

What brings me back to judging year after year is not the responsibility of choosing winners. It is the privilege of witnessing ideas while they are still finding their place in the world. There is something deeply hopeful about that.

Across various sectors, I see people investing their creativity in helping others understand, connect, imagine or care. Sometimes those attempts are polished. Sometimes they are wonderfully imperfect. Both matter.

Especially when younger creators are involved.

One of the quiet joys of judging student and youth work is that it offers a glimpse into questions that the next generation is already asking and how they are choosing to frame them and reflect upon them. Often, they approach topics like empathy, climate, identity or community with remarkable honesty. They are so direct too. Those concerns are simply part of the world they are growing up in.

I find that reassuring. The psychologist Erik Erikson spent much of his work describing exactly this — that each generation arrives able to see and understand things the ones before it genuinely couldn't. Paying attention to what is emerging has always felt more interesting to me than celebrating what is already established.

Once the winners are announced, after all the celebrations, I often keep thinking about the projects I encountered along the way.

I wonder which teams found funding.

Which ideas evolved.

Which game quietly found its audience.

I realise I spend a surprising amount of time cheering for people I'll probably never meet.

Recognition, after all, is only one moment in a much longer story. The real work happens afterwards. The conversations continue. Teams grow. New collaborations appear. Ideas migrate into other projects. A single experience can quietly influence many others in ways that are impossible to measure.

This work offers a rare vantage point from which to observe where creativity is moving next.

Every time I accept an invitation to judge, I leave with far more than a list of winners.

I leave with new questions, renewed optimism, and a quiet excitement for the people and ideas that are still becoming.