Northern Lights: Big things ahead after a fantastic first year as a registered charity

We kicked off the year with an awards lunch for the ten educational establishments that participated in part 2 of our knife crime awareness art exhibition competition. It was held at Sheffield Cathedral where the artwork was on show to the public for two weeks. The attendees were given awards for participating, but the facility with the most votes won the champion trophy; Sheaf Training (trophy provided by M&A Trophies). The attendees were lucky enough to hear some powerful speeches from Dean Abby, Dominic Heslop, Abtisam Mohamed and Nancy Fielder. Before eating a delicious lunch from the Tattooed Goose.

Victims Voices Documentary: we worked with Big Take Media to create a documentary to show the impact of knife crime and the devastation that it causes.

To premiere the documentary, Central LAC let us use the Town hall, to showcase the documentary and artwork for two weeks. We worked with local artists to create artwork around the daunting facts of knife crime and had artwork created by students. Over 300 people attended the premiere, and the documentary got excellent feedback.

Sheffield Forge Flag football: both our under 11 team and under 14 team participated in two tournaments, one hosted by Burnley Tornados, the other by Nottingham University, both teams did excellent and bagged their first wins.

Foxhill Youth club: in July we started a youth club at Foxhill Forum, now we have up to 40 young people that come along. We offer them a small meal and discuss topics that they may need educating on, in their area and across the country. Activities include: PlayStation 5 so they can play games like, Fifa, NBA and Hot Wheels.

Outdoor activities, Football, dodge ball and tig. Indoor activities such as Table Tennis and Boxing. For those that do not like sorts we do Arts and crafts, allowing the young people to take home what they make.

Youth club High green: we were asked by HGDT to take on the challenge of getting more young people to attend the youth club on Friday’s evenings. After some planning and outreach in the High Green Areas we were able to get the numbers up.

Word of mouth has now taken over and we are getting 30 young people every session. This was achieved in under five months by our team.

We offer young people from the age of 16 -24 the opportunity to go on the remix of song called Boundaries by Sheffield Music Artist K Dot. Out of all of the entries Escae and Kid blu3 made it to perform their verse live and have the chance to be on the remix. After many conversations and deliberation, I decided that it was only right for both of the artist to go the song as they showed two very different views on knife crime. Boundaries, The Remix will be released at the end of February.

“Why me” is a short movie created by 12 young people to raise awareness of Knife crime and the fact that it can happen to anyone. During this project the young people had lessons on Script and story board witing, filming and editing by Big Take Media and an acting lesson by Theatre deli. This project was created by young people for young people.

Victims voices will now be a docuseries as we have been working with Big Take Media filming more people that have been affected by knife crime and those that are trying to prevent it from happening.

We have big plans this year: The premier of the Victims Voices documentary’s; the music video for Boundaries Remix and Why Me, the short movie will take place around the end of February - packed with guest talks and live Q&A from people whom took part in the projects, this is an event not to be missed! Follow our social media accounts to keep up to date.

A huge step for Sheffield Forge, our American Flag Football team as we are joining our first Flag football league; All-Stars Northern flag football league. An excellent chance to show the impact of grass roots sports. If you know any young people aged 8-15 that might want to join, get in touch.

We have been working our Mobile youth club for nearly a year, but we are now in the position to say that it will be completed this year, so expect to see us delivering outreach support to young people around South Yorkshire soon.

Additional to our talks around knife crime, gangs and antisocial behaviour, we be rolling out our students centred, bespoke mentoring programme across schools and colleges within south Yorkshire.

We would like to thank all of the funders for seeing the benefits in our projects and our supporters for believing in us.