How Do We Talk About Youth Violence Without Focusing On Knives?

The public discourse around youth violence is heavily focused on the imagery of weapons/knives and death and this has had an impact on strategic policy and policing practices. How do you want to disrupt this focus and instead create a craftivist art installation which focuses instead on the lost childhoods of young people who are involved in youth violence?

Ideas Exchange 2024/25

What will it involve?

The project team has already reviewed evidence which has shown that many of the attempts to reduce youth violence are knife focused interventions (such as bleed kits, knife surrender bins, the knife angel, knife awareness social media videos), which have little evidence of effectiveness and may even increase fear among children.

They  want to deliberately acknowledge that those who carry out youth violence are both victims and perpetrators and move away from binary perspectives. To do this they will use the model of the ‘clothesline project’ using school shirts decorated by young people affected by violence in Bristol to illustrate ‘empty shirts, lost childhoods’.

The team will invite children and young people across the city who identify as having been affected by violence (directly or indirectly) to decorate a plain school shirt however to express their views. This might include thoughts, lyrics, poems, memorials or colours that reflect their perspectives on violence. This is a nod to the tradition of drawing on school shirts as children leave school, with the implication that children involved in youth violence do not get to graduate; whether due to being victims of violence, perpetrators in prison, excluded from school

 The shirts will become an art installation with information signs about the impact of violence on children in the city during 'knife crime awareness week' in May 2025. Reflections will be collected to create a 'community manifesto' which will be delivered back to the Serious Violence Prevention Board.

Alongside the art installation the researchers will hold a panel discussion with local stakeholders focusing on how to talk about youth violence in terms of childhoods instead of knives.

This work will be part of a wider collaboration with Bristol City Council/One City and the 'Serious Violence Prevention Board’ and will engage the University of Bristol Violence Prevention Academic Hub, community partners (including the youth justice team, local schools and colleges, and local charities including Empire Fighting Chance) and grass-roots collaboration.

Who are the team?

  • Jade Levell, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
  • Joanna Staines, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol