LUULA Table Set Nominated for the Kind + Jugend Innovation Award 2022

A Little Encouragement, a Meaningful Beginning

Sometimes, someone outside your own small team sees what you have been working towards—and helps you believe it can go further.

For us, one of those moments came at Kind + Jugend in Cologne in 2021, when we met Nils Bader, founder of the Green Product Award and a member of the Kind + Jugend Innovation Award jury.

Nils showed a warm interest in our creative table and encouraged us to enter the Innovation Award competition. His appreciation meant a great deal to us. We had put our ideas, our understanding of children’s needs, and our love of beautiful design into LUULA. Hearing his response helped us feel that what we imagined could resonate beyond our own family and workshop.

Perhaps this was more than a dream we believed in ourselves. Perhaps others could see its value, too.

A Place for Children’s Ideas

As a designer and psychologist, and as parents, we have always been interested in the relationship between children and the spaces around them. What can they reach? What can they try independently? Is there room for their curiosity, their movement, and their own way of doing things?

The LUULA creative table grew from these questions.

We wanted to create a place where drawing, sensory exploration, play, and learning could happen naturally, side by side. A table that could adapt as a child grew and their interests changed. Something useful and thoughtfully made, with a quiet beauty that would feel at home in a shared living space.

For us, attention to children’s needs and attention to design have always belonged together. The proportions, materials, and details all contribute to how a child experiences a piece of furniture—and how comfortably it becomes part of everyday family life.

Returning with Our First Nomination

In 2022, we returned to Kind + Jugend as part of the Latvian national stand organised by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA). This time, our LUULA creative table was nominated for the Kind + Jugend Innovation Award.

It was our first international award nomination, and a deeply meaningful moment for our small team.

Behind the table were many conversations, sketches, adjustments, and everyday observations of children. To see that work recognised gave us fresh confidence to keep developing our ideas and sharing them with families and educators beyond Latvia.

We came home encouraged, grateful, and ready to continue.

Thank You, Nils

Looking back, we remember both the nomination and the conversation that helped us take the first step towards it.

Thank you, Nils, for seeing something in our work and encouraging us to bring it forward. You inspired us to begin this beautiful journey with greater confidence—to believe that our ideas about children’s needs, expressed through thoughtful, beautiful design, could become something meaningful in other people’s lives.

Thank you also to the Kind + Jugend jury, to LIAA and Ilze Mičule for supporting our participation, and to everyone who stopped at our stand, asked questions, and shared their thoughts.

That encouragement remains part of the LUULA story.

Inga & Kalvis Founders of LUULA