Greater Manchester VRU’s Prevention Virtual Education Programme
Summary:
A 12-week programme to help children in Greater Manchester make the right decisions to avoid serious violence and knife crime.
Description:
A scheme, which used virtual reality technology to help children in Greater Manchester to make the right decisions to avoid serious violence and knife crime, was rolled out across the region.
Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) has worked in partnership with Greater Manchester Magistrates’ Association to launch the Violence Prevention through Virtual Education programme: Virtual Decisions.
Following a successful pilot which saw 1,395 pupils across 31 Greater Manchester schools take part, the 12-week programme, created and managed by creative arts company Round Midnight, has now been expanded and rolled out to pupils from Year 5 through to Year 8 across Greater Manchester.
The technology uses real actors to take the child through a virtual reality experience that places them in realistic scenarios where they face dilemmas and must make their own choices which result in various outcomes. It allows children to experience peer pressure and choices in a safe environment.
A 12-week curriculum follows on from the virtual reality experience to reinforce lessons learned, including discussion and comparison of different experiences. The programme has been shown to impact greatly on awareness, attitudes, and behaviours around knife-related violence.