It has always been our intention for the Knife Angel to be displayed on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth, where we believe it would have the largest public impact. Throughout the years we have contacted London officials and groups innumerable times in an attempt to get the monument to London. Much of our correspondence has received no response at all, with the few responses we have had being completely averse to the idea. Of course, this has been incredibly disheartening, but it certainly hasn’t stopped us from continuing our efforts.
Read below to find out more about our efforts, which is certainly not exhaustive of everything that we have done over the years to prompt the Angel’s journey to London.
It has always been our intention for the Knife Angel to be displayed on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth, where we believe it would have the largest public impact. Throughout the years we have contacted London officials and groups innumerable times in an attempt to get the monument to London. Much of our correspondence has received no response at all, with the few responses we have had being completely averse to the idea. Of course, this has been incredibly disheartening, but it certainly hasn’t stopped us from continuing our efforts.
Read below to find out more about our efforts, which is certainly not exhaustive of everything that we have done over the years to prompt the Angel’s journey to London.
Our Chairman, Clive Knowles, has visited the Home Office a number of times to discuss the Knife Angel and its objectives. Before the Angel’s official creation began, we approached the Home Office requesting involvement from all 43 police constabularies across the UK. They agreed, so we began the process of creating over 200 knife banks for every constabulary to safely collect knives for the Angel’s creation. London’s Metropolitan Police where supplied with a number of these banks which, to our knowledge, are still distributed across the city. Through this, an incredible number of knives were seized and collected from the police force’s Mandela Way location. Due to the sheer number of knives collected, we visited the location multiple times to fill our vans with weapons. London contributed the largest number of knives to the project when compared to other locations across the country.
Letters and Correspondence
Over the years, formal letters have been written by ourselves to the likes of Boris Johnson (who was the London Mayor at the time), Sadiq Khan, council leaders and a whole host of other government officials. Many of the letters which were actually responded to were met with negativity, including Sadiq Khan’s initial response that the Angel would only highlight the prevalence of knife crime within the country and would do nothing but harm the city’s tourism. When Sadiq Khan stepped into the Mayoral position in 2016, we even formally invited him to visit us here at the Ironworks to engrave one of the blades that eventually formed a part of the Knife Angel’s wings. We had no response.
Despite the initial push back from London’s leading bodies, in 2019 Boris Johnson changed his tune and stepped up to support our plea in getting the Angel to London. Through a meeting with our Chairman, Clive Knowles, Boris agreed to write a letter to Sadiq Khan on our behalf to highlight the positive impact that the monument could have on the city. To date, we have still heard no further response from Khan.
Our latest correspondence campaign involved the lengthy process of handwriting Knife Angel postcards to hundreds of politicians, civil servants, deans, bishops, community groups, newspapers, radio stations, and dignitaries, among others. We hope that the visual aspect of this campaign will prove more effective by instantly highlighting the positive importance of the Angel and its journey across the country.
Current Status
As of late 2021, several London boroughs have stepped forward with serious interest in hosting the Angel. These boroughs include Enfield, Haringey, Redbridge, and Havering. We have also been informed that Sadiq Khan has stated that he will not prevent or discourage any London borough from hosting the monument, instead stating that that each borough should independently decide whether they wish to host the Angel or not. This is a significant step forward as London boroughs will no longer feel restricted by Khan’s aversity to hosting and will instead feel free to make their own choices over continuing the Angel’s anti-violence legacy. We hope that this change will help to highlight the positivity that the Angel can bring to every host location and will prompt central London to reconsider hosting it in the near future.
Media Campaigns
We have run a number of media campaigns since the Knife Angel’s creation began. These campaigns include an online petition, social media appeals, press releases used by national newspapers, and editorials used by magazine publications all across the country. One of the most prominent campaigns took place very early on in the Angel’s creation process, whereby we tweeted a number of photos directed to Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Each photo features our visitors and families of victims holding a ‘Save A Life, Surrender Your Knife’ campaign board with the Knife Angel as a backdrop.
Local media outlets such as the Shropshire Star and the Advertizer have supported the campaign since day one, continuously sharing the Knife Angels story and its journey over the years. Additionally, newspapers and radio shows all across the country have utilised our regular press releases and shared the Angel’s story far and wide. The Knife Angel is continuously featured within the media, allowing the monument to stay relevant and at the forefront of society’s consciousness.
Other publications such as Business Matters and My Shrewsbury magazine have also shared stories about the Angel. In 2019, we were approached and asked to write full editorials for both, with the Knife Angel even making the front cover of My Shrewsbury!
Despite the amazing impact that the tour has had on our young people and communities, we are still in a bid to get the Angel to central London as we believe the city is the ideal location for the monument’s final resting place. Additionally, we believe that its message would be most poignant if it remained there on an indefinite basis once its UK tour is completed. If you’d like to support the Knife Angel’s journey to London, please add your name and signature to the official ‘Knife Angel Campaign’ petition. Together, our voices can and will make a difference!
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