More than a 100 students across the college and the Faculty of Arts & Humanities recently participated at this year’s fifth annual King’s Cultural challenge. Amrita Rajan from the Department of Digital Humanities qualified as one of the top 10 finalists. Amrita’s promising idea was titled Make it Ours and is a year-long rewards programme for London schools, aiming to welcome young people into arts spaces that may be unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable and encourage them to take ownership.

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 Challenge winners and finalists pose with the jury)

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.