INK on Current Affairs.

Our most-recent feature on the INK website is "INK on Current Affairs". Although one of the original aims of the INK brief (self-imposed, after months of blindly wandering around not knowing how to structure ourselves) was to "report and reflect upon local and national politics" we found ourselves initially neglecting this in favour of more cultural, comment-based articles (see music, theatre, fashion, Production Notes). As a result, we decided to prioritise our coverage of the political world for a couple of months and see what happened.

The results has been very pleasing so far; we've seen an increase in visits to the site (although some of this can be attributed to the general growth that 'word-of-mouth' brings) and certainly an increase in the debate following on from articles. We have heavily indulged sarcasm, irony and attempted satire alongside more traditional reports, and have unsurprisingly seen preference for the humour.

What this seems to suggest is that contrary to previous opinion (a particular debacle involving a satirical article that prevented publication for months springs to mind...), when done properly, satire and sarcasm are well within the reaches of secondary school students. Exploring this capacity would be something that I would be very interested in following, as it seems a perfect method for engaging those who would not initially class themselves as 'political'. It is our view at INK that everyone has the capacity for political debate; that it simply needs to be exposed.

Incidentally, this theory of politicising young people was explored to interesting ends as part of the recent Channel 4 series, "Jamie's Dream School" (http://www.youtube.com/user/DreamSchool#p/u/63/kEaNWicETkA).