ABOUT

In 2006, 15 year-old Kiyan Prince – a highly regarded youth-team soccer player for Queens Park Rangers (then of the Premier League) – was stabbed to death outside his school. Were he alive today, Kiyan would be 30 and living the dream as a professional soccer player. What better example of the potential knife crime robs, we thought, than to show the life he would have had. Working with VFX company Framestore and scientists from the University of Bradford we created a likeness of Kiyan as he would be today. And, in conjunction with his former team mates and coaches, we worked out what his footballing attributes would be. Then, on May 18, the fifteenth anniversary of his passing, Kiyan became a playable character into FIFA21, the world’s biggest sports video-game, complete with an in-game boot deal from Adidas. In addition, his name was added to the first team squad of his former club, Queens Park Rangers, he got his own Match Attax card and became the face of JD, the UK’s biggest sports retailer. Simultaneously, we released online educational content in conjunction with the F2 Freestylers, the world’s biggest football influencers. The publicity generated raised over three years’ worth of donations for the Kiyan Prince Foundation in the first 24 hours alone. And in the days that followed, more people Googled Kiyan’s name than when he was killed, itself a major news story at the time. We hope that the young people who see the campaign, are inspired by the story of who Kiyan was destined to become and realise, they too, can achieve their own version of greatness, if they stay clear of knives.