Seventeen students from Hetton Academy took part in a programme using advanced 360 immersive technology and virtual reality to recreate the events following Connor's death.
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00:00 Simon and Tanya Brown are Conor Brown's parents. They've been down here with the students all week. What's it been like?
00:07 Amazing. We've been blown away from one day to today. The respect from the kids has been incredibly massive.
00:17 What they've learnt, you know, everything. It's just been such a really big impact this week on a positive level.
00:26 And obviously nothing is ever going to bring Conor back, but how much of a consolation is it to you guys that you're able to be involved in things like this?
00:33 What we said is we can't change the past. If I could go back five and a half years and have Conor back with us, I would.
00:42 We can't change the past, but what we can change and shape is the future of these young people.
00:47 So by doing this and getting involved in education and the prevention work that we do, it's changing the mindset of young people.
00:57 So it's changing their future to a positive. So it's massively important to us.
01:03 And we don't want any more families to go through what we have. And, you know, we want kids to have a life.
01:08 We want kids to have a positive future and just be the best that they can be.
01:15 Vicky Morton is the vice principal here at Stirling College. What's this week been about?
01:21 It's been about working with our partners, Northumbria Police, and young people within our communities to ensure they really understand the impact of knife crime
01:31 and actually how they can keep themselves safe in an alternative way.
01:34 Understanding the impact from themselves if they were caught with knives, the impact of what happens when you stab somebody
01:42 and that sort of ripple effect around families and communities when that happens.
01:48 So very much thinking about that immersive experience and ensuring they really understand the consequences of what happens.
01:55 Angela Hewitt is an inspector with Northumbria Police. What have we been doing this week?
02:00 So we've been running a diversionary programme called the Training Detective, which is the very first time in Northumbria that it's actually been run.
02:10 I've actually brought this from Merseyside where it's proved to be really successful in the past.
02:16 This programme, this week, has taken months of planning to ensure that we delivered an impactful week around serious violence and knife crime
02:26 and the devastating ripple effect that it has.
02:29 This diversionary programme has been supported by members of Northumbria Police, also the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit
02:38 and also the Education Partnership North East, who have allowed us to use this fantastic immersive space
02:46 to provide a cohort of 17 young people aged between 11 and 14 years from Hetman Academy to attend
02:54 and give them the experience to witness actually a real life murder, namely the tragic murder of Connor Brown.