Greater Manchester Magistrates' Association helped raise the money required to fund this initial trial. This has now been taken up by the Greater Manchester Police's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) who have worked in partnership with Greater Manchester Magistrates’ Association to launch the Violence Prevention through Virtual Education programme called Virtual Decisions.

Following a successful second pilot which has seen 1,395 pupils across 31 Greater Manchester schools take part, the 12-week programme, created and managed by creative arts company Round Midnight, will now be expanded and rolled out to pupils from Year 5 through to Year 8 across Greater Manchester.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “Like many other city-regions, sadly Greater Manchester has experienced some very serious and tragic events involving young people carrying and using knives. 

“The best way we can help to tackle this is by making the right, relatable and engaging educational opportunities available to young people. I’m really excited that our Violence Reduction Unit, in partnership with Greater Manchester Magistrates’ Association and Round Midnight, has been able to put this virtual reality education programme in place to help keep more young people in our region safe from knife violence.

Nicola Jones, Enrichment Coordinator at Youth Challenge Secondary, said: “The Round Midnight programme is amazing, the approach worked really effectively with our students as it gave them time to talk, and the facilitators listened to everything they needed to speak about. I personally have been in many sessions around crime and knife crime with our students, but this made them stop, think and most importantly listen. The idea of the VR sets to engage young people is nothing short of genius. What an amazing programme”

Here is a link to the Virtual Decisions web site:

https://virtualdecisions.co.uk/vd-knives/