B&FC students design posters for resort violent crime campaign

Blackpool and The Fylde College (B&FC) students have produced a hard-hitting poster campaign to try to help reduce violent crime.

The posters will be placed in licensed premises in Blackpool, as well as around the College and at Victoria Hospital’s A&E department, in the run up to Christmas to remind people to stay safe over the festive period.

The project came about after Blackpool Council and Lancashire Constabulary contacted the College about a campaign which would highlight the impacts of violent crime and remind people “the choice is in your hands”.

Sue Crosbie, Employability Team Manager at B&FC, said: “We had a meeting about the issue which was attended by Matt Dougall, from Blackpool Council’s Community Safety team, the police, North West Ambulance Service, Blackpool Business Improvement District, Pubwatch, A&E staff and Lia Emmerson from Horizon – the co-ordinator of Safe Haven.

“Everyone got involved to come up with some ideas about the impacts and outcomes of violent crime, which gave the students a design brief for the poster campaign.

“The students drove the project forward and came up with the designs themselves, which had to be hard-hitting to really drive the messages home.

“These are the kinds of projects many of our students will go on to work on throughout their professional lives so it was good for them to get the opportunity to get first-hand experience of a professional campaign, with an extremely important message attached to it.”

The Art and Design students involved in the project were:

 Angel Page, 17, from Marton

Jonathan Woodhead, 31, from Marton

Mitchell Gibson, 16, from South Shore

and Daniel Fraser, 31, from Blackpool

The Ofsted Grade 1 Outstanding College will continue working on the campaign with the partner agencies, with a new set of posters due to be rolled out across Blackpool in the new year. The project will also include an educational theatre production through the B&FC Inspire programme, which will reach more than 2,400 students. The aim is to ensure the message remains prominent that those who make the wrong choices could face devastating and long-lasting effects.

Cllr Gillian Campbell, Deputy Leader of Blackpool Council, said: “With Christmas upon us we thought it was a good time to launch this campaign to try to reduce incidents of violent crime and compliment all the other hard work being carried out by the emergency services, the licensed trade and the council.

“What our research highlighted was that 16 to 24 year olds were more susceptible to being victims or perpetrators of violent crime so we wanted to engage with people in that age group to come up with ideas which would raise awareness of the consequences.

“We want people to come to Blackpool to enjoy themselves, have fun and remember it for the good times.”

B&FC puts experience in industry at the heart of its educational offer and more than 1,800 businesses – including Ford, BAE Systems Jaguar Land Rover and the NHS – choose the College to deliver their education and training programmes.