A new outdoor gym has opened in east London that is constructed from the metal of recycled knives and deadly blades.

Charity Steel Warriors set up the facility in a park in the Poplar area of Tower Hamlets in the hope it will steer young people away from crime and into health and fitness.

The gym consists of several metal climbing frames, gymnastic beams and parallel bars, ideal for bodyweight resistance exercises like callisthenics.

The charity worked with the Metropolitan Police to make the gym equipment using the metal from melted-down knives and blades.

Image: The weapons used to make the equipment came from weapons seized or given up

These were weapons that had either been surrendered to or confiscated by police.


"Knives are in the very DNA of the gym," Steel Warriors founder Ben Wintour told Sky News.

"If it was just a normal gym people wouldn't necessarily talk about the (knife crime) issue, but because it's built into the gym itself, it gets people talking about it."

According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 36,998 knife crimes offences in England and Wales between June 2016 and June 2017.

Image: 'Knives are in the very DNA of the gym', says Ben Wintou

That is a rise of 26% on the previous year with the majority of new offences happening in Greater London.

Steel Warriors chose Tower Hamlets for their first 'knife-gym' in an attempt to get young people off the streets and away from gangs.

The borough is one of the poorest in London with a relatively high level of knife crime.

Shanice Antoine, 18, lives in the area and believes the new gym will make a difference.

"As a child growing up in an area like this, it mentally scarred quite a few of us," she told Sky News.

Image: The facilities were built with charitable donations.

"We had no facilities to go to. We had nowhere to go. We were just sitting on the street at the age of 12, drinking, smoking, drugs, fights, we did it all.

"And people didn't just use their fists; they would use knives, even swords. And it was scary."

Nationwide funding cuts have reduced the amount of money available for local government youth services in the borough.

The new gym was built with charitable donations.

Local councillor Rabina Khan has welcomed the initiative, but says there needs to be community-wide strategies to create a long-term solution to knife crime.

She told Sky News: "The community which includes families, parents, community leaders, mosques, faith leaders, schools, they have to come together to work with the police and statutory agencies so that we can address the level of knife crime in the borough."