Anti-Violence Weapons Awareness Assemblies
Bradford Youth Justice Service along with input from our key partners; West Yorkshire Police, Health and the Youth service in conjunction with the YES project and SAFE taskforce would like to deliver an Anti-Violence Weapons Awareness presentation to year
group assemblies across the Bradford district. This offer is part of Bradford’s commitment to anti-violence and reducing the impact of harmful behaviours and aligns with the Knife Angel’s visit to Bradford during the month of April 2023.
The Knife Angel is a twenty seven foot sculpture made from 100,000 confiscated knives from 43 police forces and was designed and made by Sculptor Alfie Bradley. The Knife Angel will be situated in City Park, Bradford throughout the month of April. The Knife
Angel is touring the Country and has become a national symbol of, ‘Anti-violence and anti-aggression’.
The timetable to deliver the assemblies to schools will cover a four week period; either side of the Easter school break. This will include, week commencing 20th March and 27th March and weeks commencing 17th April and 24th
April with assembly dates ending on 26th April.
As part of our multi-agency approach we have successfully delivered weapons awareness assemblies across the Bradford district in February 2022 and December 2022 to over five thousand pupils from year groups seven to eleven.
We aim to deliver to year groups in each school during one visit; one-year group assembly following the other. We are mindful this needs some logistical planning and potential changes to the school timetable and therefore would ask to deliver to a minimum
of two assemblies per school. The assembly presentation takes approximately thirty five minutes and we would require ten minute between each year group assembly to allow for logistical year group change over.
The Knife Angel is also part of a wider initiative which is an Anti-Violence Month in the Bradford District. As part of this, the partnership aspire to recruit at least ten thousand young people in the Bradford area to commit and pledge to be anti-violence
champions. Therefore, as part of the above presentations, each pupil will receive both a weapons awareness consequences card and a Knife Angel card, to allow them to pledge to be an ‘Anti-Violence Champion’ as part of the project. We also hope that young
people will visit the Knife Angel at City Park and learn about keeping safe, the impact of violence and most importantly, what to do and who to contact if they need support.
There will also be more information soon with regards to a district-wide arts award and competition, which we would encourage all schools to take part in. The awards will be judged by several prestigious VIPS locally and the finalists will be invited to
a special celebration of their art work at the Knife Angel site on the 27th April.
If you would like to take up the assembly offer and directly involve your school in the knife angel anti-violence message please email me in the first instance on
john.thompson2@bradford.gov.uk with your proposed dates.
Alternatively, you can book assemblies dates by contacting me directly on my mobile number. John Thompson M: 07974585743