Ariel’s team have been working with Merseyside Violence Reduction Unit, since 2019, to scale up our evidence-based approach to violence prevention education to primary schools across Merseyside. We now have more than 160 local schools delivering our skills-based approach sustainably, reaching more than 6,000 children each year.
Key to our approach is empowering teachers to deliver our programmes effectively and at scale, in a way that reaches a far larger audience than Ariel could ever reach through direct delivery. We provide a programme of teacher training, supported by online videos, to demonstrate our forum theatre approach and to build teacher’s confidence in delivering the structured role play activities that are critical to delivering positive impacts for children.
Another important aspect of our work is to find an intersection between the violence prevention education and the curriculum requirements that teachers need to deliver. Our programmes aim to support teachers to meet their educational requirements not to add to the workload of an already stretched workforce. For this reason, our programmes are mapped to the Relationship Education curriculum and have been independently evaluated to demonstrate that they are effective in delivering the intended impacts. You can read more about this evaluation, conducted by Liverpool John Moores University, here.
