This question kick-started the 2017 King’s Cultural Challenge, the annual competition that gives King’s students an opportunity to generate and debate ideas for how art and culture can make the world a better place, in partnership with four of London’s most innovative and prestigious cultural organisations.
Now in its fifth year, the Challenge enables students – from first year undergraduates to PhD candidates and across all faculties at King’s – to develop and test solutions to real-world challenges faced by London’s leading cultural organisations.
The Challenge supports students in developing their responses to a core question and finalists are selected to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges from the Challenge’s partner organisations.
The best ideas win their creators a paid internship with four of King’s partner organisations: the Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, the Roundhouse and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Working alongside professionals in the cultural sector, the interns gain real-world work experience, develop critical skills and gain new insights to support them in their future careers. In a rapidly changing world, and with the workplace ever evolving, creativity will be an essential skill – enabling an imaginative approach to problem solving and to identifying and seizing the opportunities that the changing environment presents.
Students from Health as well as Arts & Sciences faculties enjoy the benefits of internships, which help students develop their creativity while bringing new ideas and the energy of the next generation to London’s cultural sector.
Emma Lawrence, a third year English with Film BA student and participant in the Cultural Challenge praised the competition’s benefit to her overall university experience, stating: ‘It’s been an invaluable addition to my time at King’s, and I can’t overstate the importance of cultural engagement in academic studies.’
A 2016 winner talks about her experience