Patrick Green: Ben Kinsella’s legacy

Everyone has a story. The Islington-based charity, the Ben Kinsella Trust in Clerkenwell, helps tackle knife crime with its flagship exhibition at Finsbury Library in St John’s Street – which re-opened in mid April 2022 after a refresh. CEO Patrick Green explains more about the ways this murdered 16-year-old’s legacy helps young people make positive decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. Interview by Nicola Baird

In 2008, 16-year-old Ben Kinsella wrote to the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, calling on the government to do more to tackle knife crime. “Ben felt no one was paying attention to young people. He went to what is now called Beacon High (Holloway School) and was a prefect and peer mentor. He clearly saw a lot of violence around Islington, but he was shocked by the news of two young Goths, one murdered and one badly beaten in a park in Lancashire, just because they looked different,” says Patrick Green, who has been CEO of the Ben Kinsella Trust since 2016.

Three months after writing that letter, Ben was murdered in an unprovoked attack on his way home after a night out with friends.

The Ben Kinsella Trust was set up in Ben’s memory by his actress sister, Brooke Kinsella.

In 2012 the charity’s lobbying helped raise the mandatory life sentence for knife related murder from 15 to 25 years.

“Like Ben, Brooke lived in Islington. She’d gone to the Anna Scher Theatre in Islington and was already well-known in Eastenders. Brooke wanted to educate young people about the dangers of knife crime and help them to make positive choices to stay safe. The exhibition helps to get the message across to young people that carrying a knife will not protect you. It also educates young people, so they give better advice to each other and strengthens their resolve not to carry a knife,” explains Patrick when we do the interview over Zoom just before it is due to reopen.

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The Ben Kinsella Trust has also run many workshops at primary and secondary schools with a focus on listening to what young people say. But it is the exhibition in Finsbury Library, on St John’s Street, that schools often choose to take students to help educate all young people about the dangers of knife crime. It’s been so successful that the Ben Kinsella Trust has also opened anti-knife crime exhibitions in Nottingham and more recently in Barking and Dagenham.

Patrick, 59, never met Ben, but he was working with national charity, Victim Support, when he met Brooke Kinsella. “She was a media ambassador for Victim Support. We got chatting and I became very interested in the approach she was taking to knife crime and the way she was proposing to do it. I came to see the exhibition she was creating and was blown away,” he says.

“The model for the exhibition is very similar to the Anne Frank Museum in Holland. That house is maintained as it was on the day Anna was arrested and taken away to a concentration camp when she was 15. It’s a profound and emotional visit and leaves you with a determination to stand up to hate crime.

“We’ve tried to do something similar with Ben’s story and others who’ve been affected by knife crime. Exhibitions allow you to absorb content at your own pace. It’s a different way of learning. The young people who visit our exhibition witness the tragic legacy that knife crime leaves behind. The trauma, loss, and debilitating grief which stays with the families, friends, and communities forever. Our exhibition invokes positive change in young people’s understanding of knife crime. That is Ben’s legacy, and we will continue to educate young people to keep them safe for as long as we are needed,” explains Patrick.

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Places Patrick Green loves in Islington

• I share one great hobby with Ben and that’s football. Ben was an Arsenal supporter – I’m not – but I still think that the Emirates, and Highbury as it was, is a key landmark in the borough. The football club and work that Arsenal in the Community both do is fantastic.
• I like Whitecross Street. It’s quite close to the exhibition and a great temptation every lunchtime. I enjoy a varied diet thanks to the amazing food stalls and it is such a vibrant place to visit.
• Islington is full of history. Our exhibition is based near City University and I think Clerkenwell with its little side streets and its rich history is a fascinating place to work.
• For me the most striking thing about Islington – not being an Islington resident, is that Islington is different to anywhere else I’ve been in London because residents have a great sense of their Islington identity, that is something you don’t come across in London very often. When I started working in the borough, people say hello to each other in the shops – I live in Lewisham, and I don’t come across the same sense of community in my locality. It’s a great borough and I really enjoy socialising and working here.
• A brisk walk from Clerkenwell and you’re in the West End – but Islington has got so many great attributes: pubs, clubs, bars and great night life.

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Refreshed exhibition
From April 2022 the exhibition is having a refresh to make it more relevant to young people’s day-to-day lives.

“We’re constantly listening to young people and getting their thoughts on how we can continue to improve the exhibition. The most significant change we have made over the last 10 years involves the inclusion of content highlighting the link between social media bullying and knife crime,” says Patrick, who is 59. “When we started off, social media was rarely mentioned in workshops by young people. Now it is always mentioned, so much so that we’ve changed some of our content to reflect this.

“There are many benefits to social media, we all use it, but people my age often don’t grasp how important it is in your life as a young person,” adds Patrick. “Your online identity is incredibly important, you date and meet and make friends through social media. So, to be bullied or ridiculed online can be deeply, deeply upsetting and this often leads to young people feeling that they have to do something to save face and this adds to the cycle of knife crime.”

The exhibition is particularly effective for students in the last year of primary and the first year of secondary school – the transition years. See how to make an appointment below.

Knife crime trauma
We read so much about knife crime in the media and may well know families that are dealing with the trauma of an injured or dead or imprisoned young person – it’s always personal. Patrick is brilliant at explaining more about the complexity of knife crime. “Knife crime for the country is higher than it was 10 years ago. However, since the pandemic it has started to come down and quite considerably in London in terms of the number of knife crime incidents. But in 2021, despite knife crime incidents decreasing, the number of teenagers murdered in the capital was the highest on record. So, while it appears that we are seeing less knife crime, the ferocity of attacks is more deadly,” he says.

“The message we work hard to get across to young people is that carrying a knife will not protect you, it will only increase the danger to yourself and those around you. The drivers for knife crime include deprivation, poverty, inequality, school exclusions, drugs, gangs, the lack of provision of mental health services to young people – a vast array of social issues which need to be addressed if we are to tackle the root cause of knife crime. This is often referred to as a public health approach and it is the only viable long-term solution to this problem.

“Recently we’ve seen greater focus from politicians – and that’s good, and I keep my fingers crossed that this continues,” says Patrick but with a warning. “Knife crime has fallen before. But what happened previously is that as soon as knife offences drop, the politicians have lost focus because it’s no longer seen as a problem and very quickly knife crime re-emerges again.  We have got to end this vicious cycle once and for all.

Patrick is also campaigning with the Ben Kinsella Trust, “for a change in the law to ensure deadly zombie knives which are banned in the UK don’t get through customs and end up on our streets. We also want to ensure that if a legitimate knife is delivered to an address there is age verification, rather than it being just popped through the letter box.”

Good luck to all at the Ben Kinsella Trust.

• Find out more about the charity’s work tackling knife crime through education and campaigning at benkinsella.org.uk
• Book a workshop at https://benkinsella.org.uk/islington-london-knife-crime-workshops /
• Go to the Ben Kinsella Exhibition: This is at Finsbury Library, 245 St John Street, EC1. You need to book an appointment. It is free to anybody who lives in Islington. “The vast majority of Islington schools have been to it.”

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. Thank you to Dorothy B for suggesting this interviewee If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola