The community gym made from melted down knives taken off London's streets

An anti-knife crime charity is hoping to make London’s streets safer by finding a new use for the knives themselves.

Steel Warriors co-founders Ben Wintour and Pia Fontes have taken two tonnes of seized and surrendered knives from the Metropolitan Police, melted them down, and built two outdoor gyms.

“We found two of the key reasons why young people carry knives are protection - because people not feeling safe - and bravado, or muscle flexing,” Mr Wintour told The Standard.

“If we took all of this negative steel, melted it down and recycled it into an outdoor gym we could provide a space where young people could develop more physical confidence to walk the streets unarmed: a healthy way of flexing muscles.”

So far this year, there have been 140 violent deaths in the capital. It is the highest toll since 2008 when there were 154.

Mr Wintour and Ms Fontes came up with the idea when they heard how many knives were taken off the streets in London and how they could develop a campaign that approached the issue differently.

“We didn’t want to be another finger-wagging organisation,” Mr Wintour said.

“How can we actually do something to prevent against the key motives for carrying knives rather than just telling them that they're going to get hurt or put in jail or killed.

“We wanted to counteract against the motives.”

In 2018, Steel Warriors launched their first gym in Langdon Park, Tower Hamlets, a space chosen because it was said to be in a “gang-neutral” zone and next to a youth centre.

After its success, they partnered with Co-op to build a further 20 gyms around the UK.

Two of those have already been built - one in Ruskin Park, Lambeth and the other in Finsbury Park - and a third one is in the works, although Mr Wintour wouldn’t be drawn on where it would be built.

“We’re looking at a lot of statistics and working out where per capita there are the highest levels of knife crime across the country,” Mr Wintour said.

“Within those areas we find gang-neutral zones, so areas that aren’t under ownership of one particular gang group and are spaces where people feel comfortable and safe working out.

“We also want it to be a space where vulnerable people happen to be walking by too.”

As they scale, Mr Wintour said they want to start including mentoring and training that would help young people gain their certificate in personal training, or being enrolled in a paid apprenticeship scheme.

To do this, trainers at the gym offer free sessions and classes three times a week to help get young people involved and using the gyms.

“One of the big reasons young people turn to crime is because there's not really an alternate way of them making money,” Mr Wintour said.

Co-op Chief Membership Officer, Matt Atkinson, said the project tied in well with the company’s decision to pull knives from their shelves in response to the rising rate of stabbings across the country.

“It linked really nicely with the work that we've been doing and our work on endangered spaces within communities,” he said.

“How can you make a difference foundationally in communities around young people and give them an opportunity to turn left rather than turning right?”