Alfie: Forever 15
2026
A DOCUMENTARY PLAY
In 2023, 15-year-old Alfie Lewis tragically lost his life to knife crime in Horsforth, Leeds.
In 2025, we partnered with Alfie’s aunt, Mechelle Lewis, to co-create a powerful production that would tour to schools, taking students through the stories and experiences of real people affected by knife crime, and leaving them with a message of hope that safer communities are possible.
The 40 minute show uses documentary theatre, music, film and visual media to tell Alfie’s story, as well as explore the wider effects of knife crime on families, friends and communities. We worked with a team of experts to help us create the show using trauma-informed methods, ensuring that the stories were presented in a way that wouldn’t cause any unnecessary trauma or sensory overload for audiences.
Alongside the performance, we piloted an interactive workshop. The workshop, created for smaller groups of students, gives them the space to explore the play’s themes in more detail, including myth-busting around knife-carrying and personal safety. Using RedBobble’s specialist trauma-informed and relational approach, the workshop is designed to increase confidence, emotional learning and personal agency among young people.
Actors Tyler Pickles, Megan Crossland and Joe Parker, on the set of ‘Alfie: Forever 15’
MYTH BUSTING & COMMUNITY BUILDING
In March 2026, after more than a year in careful development, the play was ready to pilot across six schools in Leeds, reaching 1470 students. To understand what impact the play was having, we asked all young people some baseline questions when they entered the performance space about their perceptions of knife-carrying and community safety, and then the same questions were asked on the way out so that we could measure any immediate impact.
One of our key aims for the project was myth busting.
Before the show, the majority of students believed that carrying a knife made someone safer, but statistics show that you are more likely to be a victim of knife crime if you carry a knife yourself. Many students also described their hesitancy in reporting any concerns about potential knife violence to a trusted adult or organisation.
‘Alfie: Forever 15’ featured on ITV Calendar
After seeing the show, 76% of students described an increase in their willingness to seek help if they were worried about knife violence and we discovered a 132% shift towards rejecting knife carrying as a form of safety.
This myth busting around knife-carrying making people safer, and encouraging young people to seek help and support from a trusted adult is vital to challenging harmful beliefs, preventing knife-carrying behaviours and increasing community safety and resilience for the future.
It’s also really important to highlight that, while knife crime is a significant concern amongst young people, knife-carrying is still very rare: research from Crimestoppers indicates that 97.9% of young people choose not to carry a knife. Fear of knife violence can cause knife-carrying, so making young people aware of the real facts can increase their sense of personal safety and their perception of safety in their local communities.
“Alfie Forever 15 stands as a reminder that a single decision can freeze a life in time. We are asking young people to understand their own power, to walk away, to put it down, or to speak up. One brave choice today could mean someone lives to see tomorrow.”
- Michelle Lewis