Behind The Ad Educating Young People On 'Safe Stabbing'

Creative Salon looks behind the scenes at Saatchi & Saatchi’s 'The Fatal Question' with associate creative director Pete Ioulianou and director Jonathan Kneebone

By Cerys Holliday

20 August 2025

At a school in Tulse Hill, Brixton, the classrooms are empty, the chairs are stacked, the corridors are silent. The staff room is a makeshift video village made up of monitors and creatives leaning forward on plastic seats listening to audio through old school wired headsets. The gym is dark but not empty; cameras are in place, production is in full swing, and the eye-catching centrepiece: a large human-sized sculpture, is beaming with laser lights. The sight, intriguing.

‘Where is a safe place to stab?’ is the million dollar question projected onto the wall - the alarming insight that kick-started the entire campaign; growing numbers of young children are asking that very question, and Saatchi & Saatchi, Taylor Herring, Glue Society and StreetDoctors are set to communicate the answer: there isn’t.

'The Fatal Question' centres around real-life stories, using the narratives of individuals who died from single-stab wounds across a range of body parts, to educate young audiences about the dangers of stabbings and that there is no safe place to stab someone.

“It’s such a pressing and ongoing societal issue,” begins Pete Ioulianou, associate creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi. “Lives are being lost – it’s always important, but right now it feels particularly urgent.”

The production of the film consisted of groups of school children who were invited to participate in a workshop run by national charity StreetDoctors, which educates young people on violence. They were taught about knife crime in one of the building’s empty classrooms, before entering the gym to put their learning to the test with a human model made by Glue Society, whose founder, Jonathan Kneebone, directed the shoot.

The idea kickstarted from an insight that stopped the agency's creatives in their tracks.

“It all started with the creative team, Rory [Peyton Jones] and Elliot [Lee], who had worked on a campaign called ‘Life Cut Short’ with Alison Cope - the mother of Joshua Ribera, who was killed in a knife attack,” continues Ioulianou. “They’d built a strong relationship through that project and stayed in touch.

“Through their ongoing conversations, Cope - who now visits schools to speak with young people - shared something that stuck. She said kids were asking her, ‘Where is a safe place to stab?’. That line just stopped us in our tracks. It was such a powerful, disturbing insight, and that’s where the idea started to form for Rory and Elliot.

“When they brought it to Ollie [Agius] and I, as creative directors, it immediately lit a spark.”

Of course, according to science, there is no ‘safe place’ to stab someone; statistics around the issue of knife crime indicate it’s a problem that needs greater education. The Office for National Statistics finds that, over the last 10 years in England and Wales, the number of police-recorded offenses involving knives or sharp objects has increased by 81 per cent, with over 53,000 reports (as of March 2025), and between March 2024 and March 2025 saw just a 1 per cent decrease in reported offences.

"The issue is so vast, complex and overwhelming that you need an idea that approaches it from an unexpected direction."

Jonathan Kneebone, Glue Society

Ioulianou and Jonathan Kneebone discuss the making of the work, the importance of the messaging, and why the project is unlike any other.

Creative Salon: How did you choose which stories to include and project onto the walls? The numbers to choose from must have been overwhelming.

Pete Ioulianou: We worked with a researcher called Katie at Raw Research, who specialises in handling sensitive subjects like this - she’s incredible. We’d collaborated with her on the ‘'Til I Died’ campaign last year, so we knew she was the right person for this.

We thought it would be a tough ask: we were specifically looking for single-stab fatalities, which was crucial to the idea. We also wanted the locations of the wounds to cover different parts of the body, because the shock lies in the fact that it really can happen anywhere.

Katie came back with over 400 cases which was horrifying. From there, our first priority was the positioning on the body to ensure we had that spread. Then we focused on selecting a range of ages and people from different parts of the country because this is a nationwide issue. That’s how we arrived at the final set of stories.

Obviously the human model and beaming laser lights is a huge part of the work. What was the production process behind that?

Jonathan Kneebone: We knew from the start that we wanted to create an artwork that was accessible to kids. It couldn’t feel like something you’d only see in a museum - it had to be something people would actually want to engage with and touch.

That’s really why the team [Saatchi & Saatchi] came to us [Glue Society] - to find someone who could not only create a physical piece of art, but also capture a film around people interacting with it. That’s very much where we sit as a creative collective - blending physical, tangible work with film to bring it to life.

PI: It was incredibly collaborative. We knew we wanted a physical representation, but how that would take shape was very much up for discussion. There were conversations as basic as - should the model be lying down or standing up? What should it be made of? What should it look like?

We went back and forth with different references, and I think where we landed – which was very much JK’s idea - was on those angular shapes that segment the body. They almost invite the audience to choose an area. We really liked that concept - it added something visually striking while also serving the interactive element.

JK: When you're designing a physical object for people to interact with, it's always nice if there's a clear reason for why it looks and functions the way it does. We explored all sorts of ideas - everything from a medical-style sculpture that revealed veins to something more abstract and sculptural.

One early concept involved little pegs you could pull out, with ribbons attached, so there was a physical reaction when you made a choice. But quite quickly, we landed on the idea that light should come out of it. That felt really compelling - almost symbolic. And once we knew that, the scale had to be large enough to house all these lights inside it became a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.

PI: I think when you’re trying to constantly working out how to shape the experience for those standing in front of the model. The light, the projections, the direction they came from - even the scale of the wall - all of it contributed to how people felt when they interacted with it.

We were absolutely delighted with how the shoot went. The school kids engaged with it in exactly the way we’d hoped. They reacted, reflected, and really learned something on the day. Honestly, the way they experienced the piece couldn’t have gone much better.

Jonathan, what was it that made you want to be part of this when approached by Saatchi & Saatchi?

JK: It was the idea of people asking that question - ‘Where is the safe place to stab?’ - that really struck me. It’s such a layered question. Whether someone’s asking a surgeon or a computer, they’re essentially hoping there’s a way to use a knife that doesn’t lead to harm. There’s this pressure on kids to carry or use knives, but there’s also an intense internal dialogue - a hope, maybe, that there’s a way to use one that doesn’t hurt someone.

That observation, that this was a real conversation happening, felt powerful. The idea of engaging people with that question in such a literal, interactive way had real impact - whether as an art installation or just as an idea.

When it was first presented to us, we were looking at either building a sculpture to tour around schools or one to display publicly and allow people to interact with. The fact that it hadn’t been done before, and that it encouraged people to go through that thought process and realise, ‘No, there isn’t a safe place’, made it feel like a powerful way to connect people to the issue.

It wasn’t about making an advert that tells people to stop - it was something active and real, that could actually shift people’s thinking. And I think that’s what’s driven all of us on the project. There’s been this sense of responsibility to the idea, to make it work - not just in a wishful thinking way, but in a way that actually has impact. The issue is so vast, complex and overwhelming, that you need an idea that approaches it from an unexpected direction.

Why do you think it’s more important now than ever to be making work like this?

PI: Especially on this subject, it’s such a pressing and ongoing societal issue. Lives are being lost - it’s always important, but right now it feels particularly urgent.

You’ve got people like StreetDoctors working tirelessly to improve the situation, and if we can contribute in any way through our creative skills, then why wouldn’t we? Working alongside JK - it just felt like something we had a responsibility to be part of.

Jonathan, you've had a career directing all sorts of projects - how did this particular shoot compare to anything else you’ve worked on?

JK: When you're working with real people - non-actors - there's always that question of how they’re going to react. Not that actors aren’t real people, of course, but when you’re filming individuals who aren’t used to being on camera, there's an unpredictability that can be both challenging and powerful.

With this project, we worked really hard to make sure everyone arrived in the right headspace. I actually made a short video beforehand to explain what was going to happen, so the school children came in with some awareness - but without knowing exactly what to expect.

What was incredible to watch was how the experience of being in front of the sculpture, with projections that almost felt like they were responding to what was being said, took them on a journey. It became this organic moment where they were narrating their way through the experience.

And Pete’s right - it went beyond our expectations. The shift in their responses - from ‘There must be somewhere that’s safe’ to ‘Oh my God, there’s no safe place’ – was really striking. Watching that unfold in real time was incredibly powerful.

PI: I think the unpredictability of the kids is actually the beauty of a project like this. If we knew exactly what they were going to say, it wouldn’t feel genuine.

We did everything authentically, and the only thing we planned carefully was ensuring that interaction with the kids. We didn’t know what they would say but we thought through every possible scenario. Whether they said leg, arm, or shoulder, we had a light and animation ready to respond.

The projections and stories on the walls were carefully aligned to those specific areas of the body. We really worked hard to make sure the projections were respectful.

Seeing it all happen in real life was amazing, because it worked exactly as planned in that way. For me, the unpredictability of the school kids was the true beauty of the project.

For both of you, what did you find to be the most enjoyable part of this project?

PI: Pulling it off. This has been over a year of work - trying to get it off the ground, find the perfect way to express it. There’s been a lot involved: finding the stories, creating the animations and projections, getting Glue Society on board, and working with JK on the sculpture.

As creatives, there’s always something beautiful about seeing an idea actually come to life, because so many ideas don’t make it that far- that’s part of the job. So yeah, actually pulling it off was really satisfying.

And seeing the kids react the way they did - genuine and engaged - made it feel like it truly worked. That was very rewarding.

JK: For me, there were two things that felt particularly unusual about this job. One was how completely everyone shared the same agenda – creatives, director, production – we all felt like we were contributing equally, with a lot of mutual respect.

There was a real shared understanding of the opportunity the idea presented. The graphics, projections, the kids’ participation, and the building of the model were all equally vital to the final result. Everything just gelled - which is rare.

The other special thing was that sense this project might actually make a difference. With charitable work, it can be hard because every issue feels important and some problems are incredibly difficult to solve, especially when they’re so embedded in culture.

But on the film day, seeing how people reacted, experienced the piece, and had that revelation – that moment showed us this really was a message that could make a difference.

What do you really hope audiences will take away as the final message from the work?

PI: The final, overarching message is that there is no safe place to stab. It’s about awareness and education. Those kids had that revelation, as JK's said, and who knows when or where that piece of information might help someone.

The fact that kids are still searching for a safe place to use knives is heartbreaking - it exposes an insight we rarely see in this area. If we can help just one person - that may sound like a cliché, but if we can make a real difference like that, then it’s all been worth it.

JK: It’s been an incredibly powerful project to be involved in. So many people gave a lot of their time for very little, so there are plenty of thank-yous to go around.

But I think the reason everyone was happy to do that was because the idea was incredibly insightful and strong. Secondly, it’s a cause that really matters. And probably most importantly, there’s a genuine feeling that this might actually make a difference.

To continue bringing this vital education into the right spaces, the three minute film will form part of the charity’s ongoing education workshops in schools, prisons, and local community groups. StreetDoctors will also provide educational information on the dangers of knife crime on their own dedicated site.

CREDITS

PHOTO CREDIT FOR ASSETS - Michael Leckie/PinPep

CLIENT: StreetDoctors

Martin Tilbury - CEO

Gerard Mitchell - Relationships & Investments Manager

Fee Lyssejko - Communications & Advocacy Coordinator

ADVERTISING AGENCY: Saatchi & Saatchi

Franki Goodwin - Chief Creative Officer
Will John - Executive Creative Director
Pete Ioulianou - Associate Creative Director
Ollie Agius - Associate Creative Director
Elliot Lee - Senior Creative
Rory Peyton Jones - Senior Creative
Ajay Sookraj - Conceptual Designer
Dyfed Thomas - Account Director
Lupien Troelstra - Account Manager
Lizzie Mabbott - Senior Integrated Producer
Nayab Malik - Senior Integrated Producer
Harriette MacNaughton - Producer
Rita Aboderin - Production Assistant

Abdul Onipede - BTS Photographer

Bridget Moyle - Senior Strategist

PRODUCTION AGENCY: Biscuit x Revolver

Glue Society - Director, Jonathan Kneebone

Ran Holst - Producer

Fiona Martin - Producer

Shawn Lacy - Founding Partner

Daisy Mellors - Executive Producer

Katie Keith - Executive Producer

Emily Atterton - Head of Production

Dalia Saeed - Production Manager

Ollie Watts - Production Assistant