100,000 knives make up this incredible sculpture with an important message

A giant angel sculpture made of 100,000 confiscated knives has been installed in front of Coventry Cathedral in the UK to highlight the impact of knife crime.

It took artist Alfie Bradley almost two years to create the 27-foot (eight-metre) Knife Angel, made up of 100,000 blades that had been handed over to police stations across the UK during confiscations and amnesties. It’s a sobering and powerful reminder of the lives lost in the rising tide of knife crime.

Mr Bradley said his Knife Angel is a “monument against violence and aggression,” as well as a “memorial to those whose lives have been affected by knife crime.” Engraved on the angel’s wings are personal messages from over 80 families of the victims of knife crime.

The sculpture was commissioned by the British Ironwork Centre in Oswestry, Shropshire, after the government granted Mr Bradley permission to collect the weapons from knife banks in police stations across the country. It was unveiled in 2017 and displayed in Liverpool and Hull before arriving in Coventry last Thursday, the same day that official crime figures reported that England and Wales dealt with 21,484 knife and offensive weapons offences last year – the highest number since 2009.

The sculpture will stand at Coventry Cathedral until 23 April but the British Ironwork Centre has set up a petition calling for the Knife Angel to tour the country and to be installed in Trafalgar Square in London to highlight the impact of knife crime.

“There is an overwhelming tide of public opinion that wants to see this incredible national monument ‘fulfill its destiny’ in raising countrywide awareness of the epidemic that has now become knife crime,” the petition reads.

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