18 August 2017
CMCI students get top honours and recognition at King's Cultural challenge 2017
Josephine Pachta-Reyhofen, from the Department of Culture, media and Creative Industries recently won at this year's fifth annual King's Cultural challenge. Charley Utton, also from the department, was announced as one of the 10 finalists at the event.
Josephine Pachta-Reyhofen, from the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries recently won at this year’s fifth annual King’s Cultural challenge. Charley Utton, also from the department, was announced as one of the 10 finalists at the event.
More about the challenge
Each year, the challenge calls upon all King’s students to inspire debate and innovation around how art and culture can affect positive change in the world. Acknowledging recent global and political developments, this year’s challenge asked students to devise innovative projects, initiatives or activities to answer the following question: In a divisive social and political climate how can arts and culture drive social change?
The Culture Hack
The Challenge final was followed by a Cultural Hackathon where more than 100 students across eight faculties were provoked by cultural industry experts from some of London’s most prestigious cultural institutions: Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, V&A and Roundhouse. The provocations focused on topical, real-world challenges faced by the organisations and were designed to inspire students’ creative thinking and problem solving abilities.
10 finalists were selected from 30 full applications and each received presentation coaching to develop a concise five-minute pitch explaining their core idea. Students pitched to an expert jury including King’s senior staff, previous Challenge winners and leaders from Challenge partners. The judges were looking for well thought-out ideas that showed initiative and explained how it would work in practice and how it would be funded and resourced.
Charley Utton, who qualified as a finalist, worked on a presentation titled Bring the Arts Home – a project aiming to take high quality live arts experiences into communities, whether it’s in their living room or school playground.
Winning ideas
Josephine’s idea was titled Sign Stages Festival – a festival that would celebrate work with and by deaf performers and aims to introduce hearing audiences to new experiences and promote the quality of work by an under-represented community. Josephine will now go on to pursue an internship with partners of the Challenge.
Details of previous Cultural Challenge winners' experiences working within the Challenge partners are available on our archive pages. More information about the King’s Cultural Challenge, which will run again in early 2018, is available on the student opportunities pages on the King's website.