MUSIC, art and dance are all being utilised by students at Wiltshire College, Salisbury, to highlight the plight of bees.

The 16-19 year-olds on the BTEC First Diploma in Media course have to create a campaign as part of their course and the 36 students chose to focus on the need to protect bees from extinction.

Project co-ordinator Vicki Bulman said: “We had a list of about 23-24 ideas we’d come up with. We voted and Save the Bees won the vote.”

They started working on the campaign at the start of the term and carried out a lot of research into existing campaigns on saving bees around the world before starting their own campaign.

Art students have been making fliers and posters with the slogan “Save the bees, save the world” and the music students are putting together a CD of bee-related songs, including one they wrote themselves.

George Small composed the music with help from one of his tutors, Colin Holton, and all the students will sing the chorus together.

Kaytee Bond said: “It was hard work getting it to sound right, but it’s sounding pretty good now.”

Another student, Ben Barnes, has also built a website to highlight the group’s campaign, which is due to go live in the near future.

In the final stages, around Easter, the students will be out and about in the city centre, handing out leaflets to highlight their campaign. To raise the profile, six girls in the group have been putting together a cheerleading dance to draw in the public.

Charlotte Cadogan said they have choreographed the routine themselves and are even designing their own costumes.

Course leader Simon Birch said: “They are a really good bunch and they deserve this recognition because it really is a great campaign.”