Last Date - Discounted educational resource

Last Date is a groundbreaking 20 minute domestic abuse drama from the makers of Leaving. It is designed to be a preventative tool and to increase awareness of how abuse can begin and trap people in relationships.

“Last Date will help break cycles of abuse and in supporting young people to make healthy decisions.

– Rachael Rice, MA Oxon. Accredited Young Persons Counsellor

The film helps young people:

• Recognise the warning signs of coercive control and abuse

• Identify acceptable and unacceptable behavior in intimate relationships

• Understand how unhealthy relationships can have a detrimental impact to their mental wellbeing and self-respect

By using innovative storytelling techniques, Last Date fast-tracks the gradual nature of psychological and physical abuse and condenses it into a single night, making it clear for the viewer to see how such behaviour can take hold of a person’s life, and further escalate to entrap them in a dangerous, repetitive cycle.

Highlighting key stages from charm, grooming, jealousy, humiliation, possessiveness, gaslighting, isolation, intimidation, threat and assault; the aim of Last Date is to empower the viewer with the watch outs and red flags of a potentially abusive person, enabling them to steer clear and move forward in their own lives with more respectful, healthier relationships.

It also has the power to generate discussion around roles and responsibilities within relationships and challenge perceptions and stereotypes but also the role of society as a whole in how it reacts and intervenes.

“The film shows the ways in which an abuser undermines their partner, plays with reality, and how bystanders can be complicit. As such it is a vital resource for trainers and practitioners to use to raise the issue of coercive control and abuse. I believe this will be a mainstay of DV training for many years to come.”

– Dr Emma WIlliamson, Head of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at University of Bristol

“The Healthy Relationships film Last Date had a great balance between being explicit and discreet. It was able to highlight domestic abuse to the extreme but also allowed students to see the progression with the discreet behaviour at the beginning. This film is the perfect resource within a PSHE lesson because it prompts the students to ask questions and allows them to challenge stereotypes.”

– Kerry Mulinder, Head of Learning Development and Safeguarding St Brendan’s College, Bristol

The supporting training pack includes:

The Good Practice Guide is a supportive training resource which gives information and insights into the beginning, progression and repetition of abusive relationships and how subtle the original warning signs can be.

Starring new-comers Ellie Ekers and Perry Moore as Lori and Jack on their first date, the Social Film Drama team deliberately cast an aspirational and relatable couple, who would be young enough to show experience and promise but not be so young that their situation and the film’s setting seemed unrealistic. By setting the film in a restaurant we deliberately step away from the well trodden tropes of depicting abuse to remove assumptions and show the behaviour for what it is.

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Supported by

In association with

Cumbria Police & Crime Commissioner

Knowsley Council

Victim Support National Centre

Avon & Somerset Police

Welsh Women’s Aid

Bristol City Council/Bristol Safeguarding Children Board