No More Knives Tour Arrives at Balshaw's

You may have seen or read in the local news that the Knife Angel has arrived in the region and is outside Blackburn Cathedral.  The angel stands at 26 foot and is made from 100,000 knives that were either handed in or seized by the police.  Sadly 30% of the knives used in the sculpture arrived with bodily fluids on their surface.

The angel has toured the country as part of an anti-violence campaign.  Christian organisation The Message Trust are one charity who got behind this movement and have now brought their No More Knives tour to over 16,000 students in the North West alone.  Last week they were here at Balshaw's supported by the band Soul Box and with input from a local police officer from Leyland.

The message was a powerful one that provoked a lot of discussion and thought.  Some of the key messages were that 7 in 10 of all knife injuries in teenagers who were hospitalised were caused by the knives that they take out for their protection.

It also surprised many of our audience to learn about the law of Joint Enterprise.  The law means that if you are with another person you know is carrying a knife and they use it to harm another individual and you knew that this was a possibility, you can also be convicted of the crime.  This gave some of our young people pause for thought about the sorts of people that they are mixing with outside of school.

We were lucky enough to be seen at the end of the tour, so some of our students were lucky enough to win tickets to a concert held by the bands that toured with No More Knives at Blackburn Cathedral last Friday evening (26th November).  In addition to this, a group of KS3 students will be filmed by the BBC at the Cathedral as they undertake a follow-up session looking at Redeeming Communities and Bringing Hope.