A woman’s body and a missing person were at the heart of a mock press conference staged by students from three departments at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
Drama students added real emotion by playing the roles of relatives at a press conference for Journalism students while Criminal Investigations students had to face the press.
The innovative three-way collaboration between normally very separate teaching schools at the university was the brainchild of Criminal Investigations senior lecturer Stephen Christopher.
He said: “This follows the programme of the students taking an investigation from start to conclusion and the whole assessment model is about the application of investigation techniques.
“We wanted to take it a stage further. A part of any investigation is a media strategy, part of which is dealing with the press at a press conference.
“The inclusion of the drama and journalism students really gave it an authenticity
“I think it went very well – and it certainly had some impact on social media afterwards!”
The first stage of the six-week-long assessment project for the final year Criminal Investigations students saw them given a scenario and told to investigate it.
Working for the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), they were fed new lines of inquiry each week as fresh events unfolded, including a visit to a ‘crime scene’ house.
A woman’s body was found. She was from the traveller community but she had been working with police from the National Crime Agency.
The students, as the IPCC, were investigating possible wrongdoing by police officers.
They ‘called’ the press conference to put out an appeal to find a missing person – a young woman with learning difficulties who had been missing since just before her friend’s body was found.
Was it murder? Whodunnit? The investigation continues…
Posted on Friday 17 March 2017