After three days of listening, questioning and even trying their own hand at judging, Creative LIAisons attendees reached one of the program’s most distinctive experiences: sitting inside LIA Statue discussions as the jurors debated the work.

Few young creatives ever get this close to the decision-making behind an international award. Given rare fly-on-the-wall access inside the jury rooms, they watched jurors challenge one another, defend instincts, test whether an idea was genuinely fresh and interrogate the details that can move work from Bronze to Silver, Gold or Grand LIA. For the rising stars in the room, it is more than a glimpse behind the curtain. It is a chance to understand what great work has to survive, what makes an argument persuasive and what they can take back into the ideas and case studies they create next.

Creative LIAisons Get Front-Row Access to
Statue Discussions

From their seats inside the jury rooms, Creative LIAisons attendees watched LIA’s Statue deliberations unfold in real time, seeing jurors champion, challenge and sometimes change their minds about the work in front of them. They saw instinct collide with analysis, cultural context reshape a conversation and jury presidents guide debate without dictating its outcome. Even details as basic as entering the right subcategory, or clearly explaining the cultural context behind an idea, suddenly took on much greater significance.

The experience also revealed that jurors evaluate more than a clever thought in isolation. They consider freshness and surprise, but also the difficulty of getting an idea sold, the ambition behind its execution and whether the case study makes the most important part of the idea unmistakable. For attendees, the lesson was practical: know the category, strip away what muddies the story, understand the audience and trust your instinct enough to defend a point of view. Watching those judgments happen live turned abstract advice about award-winning work into something they could see, question and eventually apply themselves.

Creative LIAisons Mentee Reflections

Arron Moos
Art Director, Accenture Song South Africa

“Seeing how the Jury Presidents led the room gave me a fresh perspective on creative leadership. The strongest leaders didn’t impose a view; they created space for different perspectives and helped the room move forward. That’s something I want to bring into how I lead my own teams.”

Kelsey Miller
Associate Creative Director | Copy, DAVID New York

“I loved seeing how much respect the jury had for what it actually took to get an idea made. As I shape my own cases, I now see that it’s not only about selling the idea, but also showing the ambition, persuasion and craft it took to bring that idea to life.”

Ayshwarya Sharma
ECD – Innovation, Leo India
Entertainment & Content and Cultural Catalyst Juror

“It’s fantastic that LIA gives rising talent access to this process. I wish I’d had it earlier in my career. Watching ideas get challenged, defended and evaluated gives young creatives a much clearer sense of what makes work stand up, and that can only make the ideas they create stronger.”