Reminding young people about the value of life
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Royal Borough of Greenwich
Big Dreams
We all have dreams. Going to university, travelling the world, meeting that perfect person. For some, those dreams never become a reality. Every 8 weeks someone dies due to knife crime in Greenwich. A life is lost, families and friends are devastated and the news cuts through a community. Our film ‘Big Dreams’ for Royal Borough of Greenwich aims to strike a nerve by focussing on lost dreams, not data about deaths.
Press:
Problem
Knife crime in the Royal Borough of Greenwich is rising, and it continues to have devastating effects on those directly involved and the wider community. In the last three years, there have been 1,197 knife offences in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and 12 people have been killed in the last two years – an average of 1 life lost every 8 weeks.
Recognising the need to tackle knife crime in the borough, the Council worked closely with impacted families, the wider community and the Metropolitan Police on their new campaign, 'Let's Live #KnifeFree'. We were challenged to create a short film for the campaign that encouraged young people to dream big and live knife free.
Solution
It was important for us to show that knife crime impacts more people than those directly involved. The friends, families and wider communities of the victims, as well as the offenders, are forced to live with the traumatic aftermath which can often have a lasting and devastating effect.
We developed a narrative that follows a young man daydreaming about his aspirations for life, depicting scenes of him exploring the world, getting into university and starting a family. By showing our lead at multiple stages of his life, we could simultaneously have young people, their parents and older generations empathise with him. When we revisit him laying down in the same position as we first saw him, it’s revealed that he’s alone in the street, dying.
Our hope is that every viewer believes that this character could be their child, sibling or partner, whose big dreams for life will never become a reality because of knife crime.
