Luton students design posters for Bedfordshire police hate crime awareness campaign

Local news site Citiblog reports on hate crime awareness materials produced by students in Luton that are to be used by Bedfordshire Police in their poster campaign encouraging victims to report hate crime.

Students from Stockwood Park Academy in Luton won a Bedfordshire-wide competition held for schools that attended the Hate Crime Youth Conference in 2016. Chalk Hills Academy and Lea Manor High School were runners up in the competition.

The materials produced by pupils are aimed at promoting hate crime reporting among the five ‘prominent categories’ – race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

The students will see their designs exhibited on posters across the county. Leaflets have already started being distributed to organisations and local residents.

Bedfordshire Police Hate Crime Sargeant James Hart praised the pupils’ “creativity and thought”. He said, “It’s been a privilege working with the youngsters from Stockwood Academy on this project and it’s clear they really want to make a difference in their school; they have also started working with the local community in order to increase awareness of hate crime and discrimination.”

He also highlighted how important it was for young people to become educated on hate crime and said the project was about “empowering students to talk about hostility based on someone’s appearance or beliefs and providing them with skills to challenge such behaviour in an effective manner.”

Taj Hussain, Stockwood Park’s Community Cohesion Manager, explained how the school had developed partnerships with organisations on tackling hate crime. “The students are now hate crime ambassadors for the school operating under the name ‘Strength’ and have already started working on awareness initiatives,” he said.

“This all stems from our partnership work with Bedfordshire Police, including the Hate Crime Conference and the Anne Frank Ambassador programme. These projects were brilliant and made the young people think about their responsibilities on issues such as prejudice and discrimination,” he added.