Together. We're Violent Ends.
3rd July, 2019, we began our borough-wide education programme ‘Violent Ends’ working with 6000+ young people across Knowsley to raise awareness of knife crime - specifically focusing on choice and consequence.
Running alongside our outdoor touring production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, this schools programme was delivered in partnership with Merseyside Police and the ADAM Ellison Foundation, funded by Arts Council England, Knowsley Council and the Community Foundation for Merseyside. We engaged young people from Knowsley’s 6 high schools in a series of creative workshops, performances, educational resources and PSHE days that supports the city’s #nomoreknives initiative.
60 young people were led by a team of professional practitioners to devise a hard-hitting, thought provoking production staged at the theatre at Knowsley Leisure and Culture Park in October, expressing their concerns and exploring questions and solutions to this ever present threat of knives in our communities. The 60 YP also achieved Arts Awards through this project (nationally recognised arts leadership qualifications.)
Together. We can do more.
The materials found on this website are designed to be used in a number of ways through PSHE, English or Drama. The suggested activities are adaptable to fit the needs of your own students. As theatre practitioners, our aim was to provide starting points for students to reflect primarily on choices and consequences, peer pressure, empathy for others and the power of language.
The video clips can stand alone as starting points for debate about making choices and the far-reaching consequences of violent action. You may wish to choose a specific clip to create an opening discussion before moving on to the suggested tasks.
We have included materials based around Romeo and Juliet, as this was the starting point for our original workshops. The play contains a number of insults designed to inflame tempers and create division (something which is particularly pertinent today when the use of aggressive and divisive language is a cause for concern at the highest level amongst our country’s Parliament). The play was written at a time when it was not unusual for young men to carry weapons. In an atmosphere of tension and animosity, violence breaks out abruptly between rival factions who do not even seem to know why they are enemies - with brutal and fatal consequences.
The materials are available to all our partner schools. To access these materials, you will require an authorised log on which can be requested from ryan@imaginariumtheatre.co.uk