A digital education pack has been created for distribution to schools in Milton Keynes to help tackle knife crime.
Nana Oguntola realised that as a mother and a member of the community she had to do something about knife crime in Milton Keynes.
Nana decided that the best thing to do was to work through Junior Filmmakers where she could combine filmmaking and young people to create a knife crime project to highlight the problem and hopefully bring about change with young people.
The Junior Filmmakers Knife Crime Film Project is a result of that decision.
The aims of the project were to:
- Engage young people in understanding the dangers of knife crime
- Create youth ambassadors who are able to champion issues relating to the reduction of knives through their films
- Reduce knife crime by providing an understanding of its dangers to young people.
- With funding from L&Q Foundation, four films were produced through the Junior Filmmakers film-making programme.
- Young people learnt script development, writing and film production skills.
The films were premiered on July 31st 2021 to family and friends of the filmmakers, Marc Tarbit, Commander Thames Valley Police, the Mayor of Milton Keynes and other leaders and members of the Milton Keynes community.
The films have been featured on MKFM and on the BBC.
On seeing the films, Superintendent Marc Tarbit expressed his desire to support the dissemination of the films to all schools in Milton Keynes.
Thus, together with Milton Keynes provided some funding for the creation of an digital education pack for distribution to schools in order to help educate young people about knife crime.
Marc Tarbit said: "Knife Crime has a big impact on victims, offenders, families and local communities. It’s really important, therefore, that young people understand the risks of carrying knives. Prevention will always be better than a cure.
"One of the things I think is really good about the Junior Filmmakers project is that it helps young people understand the risks of carrying weapons from the view of young people themselves."
Councillor Lauren Townsend, the Cabinet Member for Public Realm at Milton Keynes Council said: "The education of young people in regards to knife crime is incredibly important.
"It is really important that young people know how to identify the early signs of exploitation, know how to choose positive friendship groups and positive activities and that they know where they can turn or who they can go to should they think they are starting to get involved in or one of their friends is starting to get involved in something they know they shouldn’t be, such as knife crime, gang activities or meddling in drugs."
The digital education pack has been created for distribution to schools in Milton Keynes.
The pack will be hosted on a website dedicated to the project for a period of 12 months and contains the following items:
- A video statement from superintendent Marc Tarbit
- A video statement from Cllr Lauren Townsend
- Five films as Milton Keynes Council funded the production of one more film which have been produced by Junior Filmmakers- The films are identified as being for primary or secondary schools, so they are age appropriate
- Teacher training materials which can be used by teachers to explore the films and encourage discussion among students about the dangers of knife crime.
- Sign posting information
Schools can also request Junior Filmmakers for a trainer to go to their school and deliver the training from the website. The training is delivered by their training partner, Advanced Learning based in Bletchley.
The founder of Junior Filmmakers and creator of the project, Nana Oguntola had this to say: "I hope that teachers and young people are able to engage effectively with the content on this site and create not just an awareness of crime but a clear understanding on the devastating impact it has on lives and ultimately create a desire in young people to stay as far away from it as possible."
