King's Cultural Challenge 2014
Background
The King's Cultural Challenge is an annual event in which all students at King's are invited to submit ideas to respond to or answer a key challenge facing the cultural sector in the UK.
From hundreds of entries, 12 finalists are selected by a panel of experts from our four participating cultural partners, the V&A, the Roundhouse, The Southbank Centre and the Royal Opera House.
The 12 finalists receive coaching and their ideas are developed to a stage where they are then pitched to four senior figures from our cultural partners in front of a live audience. Four winners are selected from the 12, and each winner is offered a paid internship with one of the partners to work to develop their idea and receive invaluable work experience.
Cultural Challenge 2014
The King’s Cultural Challenge 2014 saw four students awarded internships for their stand-out ideas. These were:
- Talissa Makdessi (Culture, Media & Creative Industries) for ‘Culture Crawler’, a treasure hunt to earn points which could be traded in for tickets
- Yasmin Goldschmidt (Culture, Media & Creative Industries) for ‘Play Arts’ which tapped into the gaming world, eg design your own festival at the Southbank Centre
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Lauren Holden (Music) for the ‘Disloyalty App’, a twist on a loyalty card to encourage audience members to visit the organisation they are least engaged with, and
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Isabel Feeney (English) for ‘Community of Culture’, which targeted families, focusing on heritage as a means of engagement.
What the winners say about their experience
The Cultural Challenge was the perfect platform for me to test my cultural and creative capacities and present them to London’s cultural leaders. The pitching experience gave me great confidence, and winning an internship and Southbank Centre has opened up amazing opportunities.
Marie Ortinau
Whether you're a challenge winner or not, taking part in the challenge is a great experience and the lucky finalists will all have the opportunity to participate in a pitching skills workshop. I still draw upon the skills I learned through this workshop when pitching to arts organisations and in general presentations for university. I would advise anyone who’s even vaguely interested in the arts to apply!
Lauren Holden
Being part of the Cultural Challenge was quite surreal for me, in terms of the opportunities it opened up for me. I learned a lot throughout the process, about developing ideas and pitches and also a lot about public speaking. It was great to be a part of the discussion about cultural institutions and their audiences. The best part was obviously then getting to work for the RSC
Isabel Feeney