Students at the newly opened Bath Studio School are to put prospective parliamentary candidates for Bath under the spotlight in a televised debate this evening.
Colin Cattanach, Bath Studio School’s Principal, said: “Teenagers and politicians might not be an obvious mix, but engaging the next generation of voters is the Holy Grail for politicians.
“This live TV political debate produced by our students, promises to be lively and maybe even have elements of controversy”.
This evening, 19th November, on the eve of the landmark Rochester and Strood by- election, The Bath Studio School creative media students studying journalism and television production will host the live, one-hour televised political debate.
The debate will be hosted and produced by a team of twenty two 16-17 year olds in the state of the art HD multi-camera TV studio.
The programme will be recorded ‘as live’ and transmitted later the same evening on the school’s youtube channel.
The prospective parliamentary candidates, representing the five main political parties for the City of Bath constituency will debate local, national and international concerns from a student audience, eager to interrogate the politicians and understand what they stand for.
Political parties represented in the debate include:
| Party | Prospective Parliamentary candidate |
| The Green Party | Dominic Tristram |
| UKIP | Julian Deverell |
| Liberal Democrats | Steve Bradley |
| Labour | Ollie Middleton |
| Conservatives | Ben Howlett |
The debate will be unique in the UK as the first student televised political debate involving all of the 5 main political parties.
Taking place on the eve of a critical by-election, it will prove to be a dynamic and lively political debate.
The programme production has been supported by the school Broadcast journalism ambassador, Stephen Dixon from Sky News who has provided an introductory package to the programme and has provided pre-production Skype support to the programme presenters.
Bath’s regional BBC News-team, BBC Points-West have also provided presenter workshops to the presenters.
The Programme will be released, subject to editorial checks, on the youtube channel ‘The Bath Studio School’ at 21.30 hrs on 19th November.
