The West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit launched their initiative on tackling violent crime in the region with a fantastic launch event and social media campaign. Our work with the violence reduction unit saw us filming so many different community groups, projects and people and our subsequent videos were at the heart of the launch activity both online and offline.
The launch event held in Wolverhampton saw the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, David Jamieson along with former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith give talks on the project along with the first public showing of our video to the audience in attendance. The event received a lot of coverage in the media along with an extended feature on BBC Midlands Today where a segment of our video was also shown on the show at 6.30pm.
Brilliant to see a small segment our work featured on BBC Midlands Today for the launch of the West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit initiative in the region. The project got great coverage with some really interesting human interest stories bringing it to life pic.twitter.com/VsDalADySs
— CMA Video (@CMA_Video) October 3, 2019
n addition to the launch in Wolverhampton, the Violence Reduction Unit also promoted the initiative extensively online and our videos were also used here too. We repurposed the footage and the main video for social media marketing use and created video content that was more suited to the platforms that the VRU wanted to use. Not only did the Violence Reduction Unit use the video content but the partners on the scheme also promoted it with our social media video work too including West Midlands Police while former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also got in on the act of tweeting about it as well as the West Midlands Combined Authority who we have worked with before on their disability travel initiative on West Midlands buses.
The video on Twitter alone has clocked up more than 3000 views through the combined accounts and activity giving a wide range of exposure online before the other social media channels and partners are taken into account. Overall the project has involved some of the biggest organisations in the region and our work with them has been an interesting experience and overview into an extremely topical and interesting subject area.
“Violence is a reflection of our society.. Rising inequality causes more violence.. It disrupts community cohesion. Societies that spend more money on communities see less violence.. these factors should be acknowledged in order to move forward” Prof Simon Pemberton @socialharm pic.twitter.com/aJDLNYv4dJ
— West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit (@WestMidsVRU) October 2, 2019
WATCH | We're proud to be part of the new West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit, which is launched today. Here's how it will work https://t.co/46RpI3M1jl pic.twitter.com/7FVSvnzM4R
— West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) October 2, 2019