Ariel Trust is an Educational Charity based in Liverpool that was set up in 1982 to improve the life chances of young people and give them a greater understanding of and access to Media from which they feel alienated. We aim to support the development of resilient young people, working with them to tackle important issues in their lives.
Our mission is to "improve the quality of education. We will develop models of best practice based on multimedia projects tackling social themes. At the heart of our work is an evidence-based approach designed to motivate and engage young people changing their attitudes, behaviour and levels of achievement".
The focus of our work has evolved over 40 years of delivering support for Merseyside's communities. In response to the challenges facing children today, we are currently focused on delivering a public health approach to violence prevention education. This is an approach that is advocated by the World Health Organisation; it focuses on early interventions that deliver impacts at four levels and is supported by a significant evidence base. Through our work Ariel aims to address these four levels of impact:-
Impacts for the community, particularly parents
Organisational change, in schools
Since 2020 we have developed a suite of interactive software programmes that support teachers to respond to challenging social issues. The resources take a skills-based approach to preventative education and are designed to be used in mainstream education settings, both primary and secondary. You can see them in use in local schools here.
The issues that we address are decided in consultation with young people, public sector partners and with teachers and represent the current and emerging threats to our young people. These include racial and homophobic bullying, alcohol misuse and grooming and sexual exploitation.
Ariel’s has been co-creating violence prevention resources since 2020 and has been rolling them out across Merseyside, through a programme of teacher training, with support from Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership. During 2025/26 we had expanded our reach to work with more than 200 schools and 6,000 children across Merseyside.
Ariel’s team of staff and key creative partners is set up to design, develop and implement effective violence reduction. The process begins with listening to young people and for over 30 years we have been co-creating interventions designed to tackle important challenges faced by children and young people.
The team need to do more than listen however, we develop narratives around the experiences of young people and build those narratives into programmes of learning. The programmes of learning are tested through partnership with external practitioners and experts so that refinement and improvement can be undertaken. The team has to be able to receive feedback from multiple sources and respond creatively to that feedback in order to develop the most effective violence reduction resources.
Ariel Trust is an educational charity (Charity Number 519688). We were established in 1982 to work with disadvantaged young people and use digital multimedia to re-engage communities and improve the life chances. We are supervised by a Board of Trustees and supported by a wide range of Public Funders, Trusts & Foundations.
