Since 2011 we’ve supported over 2,000 local young people to imagine and create positive futures, free from violence.

These young people have shaped and built ART AGAINST KNIVES (AAK). Recently, they’ve helped us design our strategy for 2024, outlining how we can continue to generate creative, hopeful and safe places and futures, for them and their peers. Together, we’ve built a clear plan for how to do this, and now we need your help to make this a reality.

Our goal for 2024 is to open our new flagship community space five days a week. This will enable us to work with 300 young people, giving them safe access to our dynamic programme of creative activity, plus mentoring, therapeutic and employment support. This includes AAK’s music studio ‘The Lab’, one of our award winning Community Nail Bars and our Design Studio.

We also want to take our creative programmes out into the community, and build relationships with 200 new young people. A team of young people who have progressed through our programmes will lead this work, going to where the next generation of young people in Barnet are, and building trusted relationships with them.

To do this, we need your support! Please help us make young people’s vision for change possible. We aim to raise an additional £25,000 by April 2024, to invest in their ideas and change the lives of 500 young people next year.

More about what we do...

At AAK we unleash the social imagination and creativity of young people and work with them and their communities to co-design personal, community and social change.

To achieve this, we embed creative spaces in London’s most isolated communities, co-designed with young people, that build on their strengths and create opportunity. Our team of creative professionals bring skills training, mentoring and specialist support, keeping young people safe and making it possible for them to thrive.

Since 2011, we’ve established ourselves as one of London’s pioneering youth organisations, renowned for our ability to consistently support London’s most marginalised young people through co-produced, creative programmes.

You can read more about what we do and our impact in our recent book, summarising what we’ve learnt from young people and their communities over the past decade - a blueprint for crafting change.

The bigger picture...

In our 12 years as a registered charity, it’s never been harder to secure funding for our work and to keep our core costs covered. Meanwhile, young people need our services more than ever.

With national cuts to local authority youth services exceeding £1bn over the last 10 years, the young people in our community have limited access to local facilities, and to positive creative, social, and learning opportunities. Many live in areas with poor transport links and low-quality built environments, experiencing severe inequalities and adversities that are worsening with the cost-of-living crisis.

With the perception of a green leafy borough, Barnet's reality is starkly divided. It is the second largest borough in the capital with pockets of extreme deprivation. Child poverty is as high as 42% and in 2022, there was a 20% surge in knife crime. In the wake of the pandemic, and with the current economic crisis, we are seeing increasing risks amongst young people and rising costs to deliver our support.

So please help us raise an additional £25,000 by April 2024!

With your donation we can continue to build positive futures for the young people in our community. If you’d like to come and visit our space, please contact us via our website.

Everyone is welcome!

THANK YOU!