The Knife Angel (also referred to as the National Monument Against Violence & Aggression) is a contemporary sculpture formed of 100,000 knives created by artist Alfie Bradley and the British Ironworks Centre, based in Oswestry, England.
What a remarkable idea!
Completed in 2018, the structure of the angel stands at 27 ft (8.2 m) tall. In order to create the sculpture, 200 knife banks were produced by the Ironworks and amnesties held for individuals to anonymously donate their knives. Knives seized by police were also included, some of which arrived in evidence tubes still with bodily fluids on their surface.
The sculpture was created in order to highlight knife crime in the United Kingdom and educate young people on the harmful effect violent behaviour can have on their communities.
The creators of a 24ft-high angel statue made of knives collected from police amnesties have said they were overwhelmed by how many weapons they had gathered, but the sculpture has divided opinion among the families of knife crime victims.
Supplying Knife Banks
Each knife bank was padlocked and chained and made of robust steel to ensure that they were completely secure for placement in areas such as city centres.
By taking on most of the logistics ourselves, they were ensuring they were enabling the police forces to carry out further amnesties and weapon surrenders all year round – not just during the annual amnesty weeks that were originally held nationwide.
In total over 200 knife banks were created there in their workshops, all at their own cost. They understood that funding cuts were one of the main reasons police forces just couldn’t afford to create knife banks to carry out successful amnesties, with some knife banks even costing over £4,000 to create.
Once the police force had completed the knife amnesty, they would organise a collection from each force to return the weapons back here to Shropshire. This was an important process, West Mercia Police even organising a police escort to ensure the knives and weapons arrived on site safely. Upon arrival, artist Alfie Bradley would work through the collection of knives and weapons, very carefully, to determine what he had to work with. Each blade was blunted and sterilised before he could contemplate working with them. A number of weapons received were still in evidence packaging and some even included traces of blood.
Over 250,000 Knives Removed from the Streets for the Angel
They’ve put out a nationwide call for the knives that the country was collecting through the knife banks. They knew that they needed 100,000 for the Knife Angel, but through the combined national effort they found that police constabularies were collecting far more weapons than this! They took each and every knife off the police forces from their amenities and recycled all excess weapons over the 100,000 that they needed. They collected knives from the constabularies free of charge, and in the end recycled around a quarter of a million blades!
