In April 2008, frustrated by the I lack of action from government to protect young people from violence, a 16-year-old Ben Kinsella wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to create a society where young people could live “peaceful and safe lives”. Three months later, returning home after a night out with friends, Ben was stabbed to death by three strangers in an unprovoked attack.
Not long after his death his sister Brooke and her parents, George, and Deborah, set up the Trust in Ben’s name with the simple aim of trying to stop what happened to them happening to another family. However, understanding how they might be able to do this was a much more daunting challenge.
Over the next 3 years, Brooke Kinsella took time out of her acting career to learn more about what could be done to stop violence. During this time Brooke undertook a commission from the BBC to visit New York and produce a documentary on how that city was dealing with teenagers and gun crime. In June 2010 she was asked by the Home Secretary to head up a fact-finding mission into the work of organisations and projects designed to prevent young people carrying and using knives. Brooke undertook a series of visits across England and Wales, looking at the variety of good work being done to end violence. In 2011, Brooke published her report entitled Tackling Knife Crime Together, setting out a number of recommendations to reduce youth violence and knife crime.
Following the publication, the Ben Kinsella Trust sat down to digest the report findings to see where we could make a difference. The report highlighted the need for more early intervention projects and more initiatives to support schools to educate young people about the dangers of knife crime. We were very keen to explore how we could help schools to deliver their early intervention work in a sensitive and compelling way.
We also sought the views of young people to find out what they felt was missing in the current approach. They told us that they wanted more than a lecture or talk on the subject. They wanted to be involved in the creation of the materials. They wanted to learn through interaction and engaging with people with lived experience rather than learn through case studies. Authenticity and localism were especially important to them.
We looked at the different approaches being taken to convey the impact and learning that lived experience can offer the educator. As a starting point we looked at the work of the Anne Frank Museum and how installations and exhibitions can bring to life the reality of other people’s experiences. Exhibitions give the visitor an insight and an emotional connection to the subject that is almost impossible to create in a talk or lesson. Exhibitions are designed to induce empathy as well as giving the visitor a deeper understanding of the subject matter by making learning visible. They allow the visitor to move through an immersive space, learning at their own pace, and it is quite different to studying in a classroom setting. Exhibitions accommodate different learning styles and provide an invigorating experience that induces reflection, debate and embeds learning. We saw the exhibition model as the perfect companion for the assembly talks, Personal & Social Health Education (PSHE) lessons and mentoring programmes that were already being delivered through schools and youth work.
Having looked very carefully at the positive outcomes achieved by the Anne Frank Museum and other exhibitions, we believed that there was huge merit in creating an anti-knife crime exhibition.
In 2012, our first exhibition opened in Islington. The exhibition was created using five rooms, all with distinct themes but all interlinked. The Islington exhibition includes Ben’s story and the effect that his murder had on his friends and family. It also considers the life of a young person who becomes a perpetrator of violence, the impact it has on them and the ripple effect into wider society.
Following the success of our Islington exhibition, we opened our second exhibition in partnership with the National Justice Museum in Nottingham in 2019. In 2021, we opened our third exhibition in Barking and Dagenham. These exhibitions include the stories of local young people who lost their lives to knife crime to ensure that the exhibition experience reflects the localism and diversity of the young people who visit.
It is now ten years since we opened our first exhibition and during this time, we have had over 20,000 young visitors through our doors. Here is a brief summary of what they told us about their experience.
• Before their visit, most young people tell us that they do not carry a knife, and that they are not involved in any form of criminality. They also indicate that they already know that if they were to carry a knife it would put them in greater danger. Given these statements it may be difficult to understand what benefits an exhibition visit has for these young people. But despite all the positive behaviours that this group display, there is often a reluctance to stop a friend carrying a knife. They often feel that it is not their place to challenge the autonomy of peers, or they feel that they do not have the subject matter knowledge or the confidence to make a stand.
• After their visit to the exhibition, over 80% state that they would intervene to stop a friend carrying a knife. This demonstrates that the exhibition visit induces a greater sense of responsibility in those who attend, which leads to a change in peer group values.
• Our data confirms that fear and concerns over personal safety often lead to young people carrying a knife. Young people who felt unsafe in their area were over 3 times more likely to carry a knife than those who usually felt safe.
• For those who attend the exhibition and admit having considered carrying or have carried a knife, the exhibition experience results in 75% of these young people stating that they will no longer carry a knife.
• Our data also tells us that a small proportion of vulnerable young people remain unchanged by the exhibition visit. No intervention is 100% successful. We know that many young people need far more than a 2 hour visit to help them overcome the challenges they face to live safer lives. But the exhibition visit often highlights these vulnerabilities long before a school have noticed them, enabling the school to put in place the additional support for these young people, before their behaviour has led to them getting into serious trouble in school or bringing them into contact with the criminal justice system. We know that the exhibition visit may highlight the need for specialist support or mentoring for some young people. With our close connections to local youth services, we are often able to make it much easier for schools to find the right support for their young people.
To assist with follow up lessons or additional learning, we have created a set of free PSHE lesson plans for this purpose. QR codes are present in each of the rooms to help teachers or youth work practitioners download these resources on site. This enables them to build tailored lessons or workshops for their groups, continuing the groups learning after the exhibition visit.
I believe that these outcomes demonstrate that universal prevention programmes are an important element of a public health approach to tackling violence. It is vital that we do not overlook the need to educate and talk to young people about the dangers of knife crime just because they are not outwardly showing signs of risk or vulnerability. By doing so we are identifying need much earlier. Crucially though, we are also providing an effective counter narrative to the messaging that young people often encounter on social media which is used to normalise and justify knife carrying.
Patrick Green, CEO, The Ben Kinsella Trust
