Safe Drive Stay Alive (Copy)

Safe Drive Stay Alive is a theatre in education project, aimed at educating new young drivers or those young people who may have just got a licence and are learning to drive. Using presentations from police officers, paramedics, trauma doctors and bereaved parents, the presentation highlights the danger of speeding, frink driving, peer pressure ,etc, and the serious and sometimes fatal consequences that can arise when coupled with inexperience. The project operated in various parts of the UK, with pupils from local schools attending the event. The various individual presentations punctuate a dramatised reconstruction of events leading to a fatal collision.

When the emergency services in London wanted to introduce the project into the Capital, they wanted a London specific film, and I was invited to join the project team to work with them on this element. I wrote, produced and directed a 20 minute drama, but filming was challenging as there was a limited budget but high expectations for the finished film. I used actors from youth and adult community theatre groups affiliated with the Queens Theatre in Hornchurch, and the event eventually launched at this venue and subsequently spread to other boroughs. I secured filming permisssion at a famous London football club, a local school where I also involved their pupils, a Tesco supermarket, a local A&E department and other London locations.

I employed a professional stunt team to design and execute an actual car crash, and this was shot at night at the Metropolitan Police training centre in Kent. I was also lucky enough to secure the services of former ITV London News journalist Alistair Stewart who presented a constructed news report from the ITV studios. The emergency crews featured in the film all volunteered their services, and make up and effects were provided by students from Shepperton Studios. The film was hard hitting, with many pupils reduced to tears and successfully underpinned the on stage presentations.