A GROUP of students has been set the tough assignment of raising interest in politics at Bournemouth University.

Students on the university politics and media degree recorded a topical TV panel show – modelled on Channel Four’s Eight Out of 10 Cats – as a major piece of course work.

The students were given the task of setting up a political society as their first assignment last year.

Student Dan Weissman said: “We’d known each other an hour. We were given one week to start a political society, so they put us right in at the deep end.”

For their TV programme, Who Cares?, the group teamed up with students on the university’s media production courses. Team captains Sonia Devji and Robbie Gavin were joined by standup comics Chris Turner and James Loveridge, with Joshua Freeland as host.

Alison Smith said the experience of setting up a political society had showed students could engage with politics.

“People are interested in issues but they aren’t interested in the way it’s presented to them,” she said.

But she said around 100 people expressed an interest in the political society at last year’s Freshers’ Fair.

While editing the Who Cares? show, the students were also organising a screening of Ken Loach’s documentary The Spirit of ’45, which explores the hopes and aspirations of the generation who elected a Labour government in 1945.

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