The Serious Chat - Managing Anger & Knife Crime (KS3-5)
60-minute high quality, detailed & flexible workshops or assemblies.
Performed to students in small or large groups.
May suit carousel days or one-off visits. Available throughout the year.
How do the sessions run?
Our workshops are performed by 3 professional actors.
We start by breaking down what we are covering in the sessions: we explore the definitions, clarify facts and any laws surrounding the topic, and invite the students to answer questions and get involved.
The students are then shown scenes with characters in everyday, relatable situations.
We use elements of Augusto Boal's 'Forum Theatre: following scenes which see young characters with conflicting objectives, we freeze the action and split the audience into groups; the students are invited to advise the characters about what to do next. This is designed to allow students to articulate opinions and feelings in a safe, objective environment.
What We Cover
Anger and mental Health, Managing Anger & Mechanisms to Moderate Emotions.
Our workshop explores issues included in the PSHE Suggested Programme of Study (Core Theme 1 - Health & Wellbeing and Core Theme 2 - Relationships.)
We take a focused look at the facts, laws and consequences of violent crimes, carrying a weapon, discrimination and hate crimes. We discuss when sadness, grief or frustration manifests as anger or violence.
The students are invited to offer advice to characters who are having a disagreement which becomes heated. We encourage them to explore how to rise above banter and diffuse a potenitally aggressive situation, with a focus on finding alternative outlets to anger. We ask them to measure the characters' anger, helping them to identify when a view point is worth 'fighting for' and effective, mature ways of doing this.
We conclude by outlining help and resources available.
We're more than happy to tailor the workshop upon request to focus on any issues you feel are particularly relevant to your students.
Included with the workshop
Teacher's further work pack
Why is it so important to discuss anger, violence and knife crime with young people?
Anger is part of our mental health as it is an emotion, just like happiness and sadness. It is completely natural to feel anger sometimes. But extreme anger can lead to negative behaviour such as fighting; or can make young people vulnernable to risky situations such as gang culture or carrying a weapon.
Shockingly, 82% of homicides among teenage victims involve the use of a knife or sharp instrument.
The Office for National Statistics shows that knife-enabled crime recorded by the police in year ending (YE) March 2024 increased by 4% (50,510 offences) compared with YE March 2023 (48,409 offences).
Teenagers remain disproportionally affected by knife crime and face a higher risk of murder by knife attacks than any other age group - stats. from Ben Kinsella Trust
UpFront Theatre Company's Managing Anger Workshop explores ways of dealing with anger – not to supress it but to find effective outlets.