I thought I’d done this before. I was wrong: here’s why you should become a Student Life Content Creator

I’m Lily Gershon, an MA student studying Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory, and I was part of the Student Life Content Creators programme. SLCC, as it’s usually known, is a paid opportunity for students to create content about life at King’s, share their experiences and build new skills along the way. This year’s programme will run from November 2026 to July 2027.

So, what’s it actually like being part of SLCC? Here’s what I found out…

I became a Student Life Content Creator with three years of student media experience already behind me, which meant I arrived with a fairly fixed idea of what a "content" role would involve. That idea lasted about a month.

Before King's, I worked in student media through undergrad and into postgrad, editing, pitching, the whole cycle of chasing a deadline that only you seem to care about. I applied to join the Student Life Content Creators programme partly because King's still felt unfamiliar outside my course, and partly because it was one of the few ways to get properly involved this early without needing to already know anyone. So when I say SLCC surprised me, that's not an exaggeration. I expected to already know how this worked.

In student media, my main experience of a university comms team was a confrontational one: you were often on opposite sides of the same story. SLCC flipped that entirely. Suddenly I was working with the Student Content Management team at King’s, not around them, and it turned out we wanted the same thing all along: to make student life at King's genuinely easier to navigate and, ideally, enjoyable. Seeing that from the other side changed how I think about institutional communication altogether, and it's not a perspective three years of student journalism had given me. It’s also the part I’d most want you to understand if you’re new to King’s: what you create doesn’t just tell students about King’s, it can shape how the next cohort actually experiences it.

Beyond that shift in perspective, the practical gains were more concrete than I expected. I came in with writing skills already; what I didn't have was any real practice pitching an idea to people who could say no to it, or taking editorial feedback without treating it as a verdict on the work. Both of those got better fast, mostly because the stakes felt lower than they had in student media, where every piece felt like it had something to prove. I also came out of it knowing people across King's I'd never have met through my course: other Content Leads, students I interviewed for pieces, people in departments I'd otherwise have had no reason to talk to. None of that was the reason I applied, but it's turned out to be one of the more valuable things I've taken from it.

I pitched a piece on financial support available to students, mostly because I thought other people needed the information. While researching it, I ended up in conversation with a fellow student worker, who mentioned a King's grant I hadn't realised I was eligible for. I applied. I got it. It's the kind of thing that's easy to undersell in a recruitment article, but it genuinely eased the pressure on my studies that term. I went looking for a story and came back with something that changed my own term, which isn't a sentence I expected to write about a content role.

The group interview, of all things, is what I'd point new applicants to if they're nervous. We were told upfront there were no wrong pitches, then split into groups of three and asked to develop an idea together. It wasn't really testing whether you'd land on the "right" pitch. It was testing how you thought, and whether you could build on someone else's idea instead of just waiting for your turn to talk. Each group gave a short presentation on what we'd come up with, and the programme leaders were genuinely enthusiastic about it, not the sort of polite nodding you brace for in an interview. It's collaborative, not adversarial, and it told me a lot about how the rest of the programme would run before I'd even started it.

I expected the feedback culture to be the hardest part, the kind of notes that make you defensive before you've finished reading them. It wasn't like that at all. Everyone on the programme, from the comms team to the other student life content creators, is genuinely friendly, and the feedback is constructive rather than critical for its own sake. Nobody's trying to catch you out. They want you to enjoy doing this as much as they want to see you improve at it, and those two things turned out not to be in tension the way I'd assumed. The work was genuinely fun, which isn't something I expected to say about a role that started as a line on my CV.

The stated commitment is about an hour a week, and honestly, you get out what you put in. I found it easy to pitch articles and get them commissioned. I mostly wrote, but pitching for video or other formats is just as straightforward if that's more your thing. You don't need a journalism background, or any content background at all. That's not a caveat; it's the actual pitch. What you need is a genuine interest in trying.

Applications for the 2026/27 Student Life Content Creators programme close on Sunday 4 October 2026, and even if you feel like you've already done something similar, it's worth applying for what it opens up: real editorial experience, skills you'll use well beyond this one role, and connections across King's you won't find through your course alone.

If you want to find out a little more about the programme before you apply, meet some of my fellow Content Creators, hear why we joined and get to know our stories. I’m featured in the piece too, so you might spot me!

Apply on King's CareerConnect before the deadline and see what the programme has in store for you!