The Center for Psychological Research, Shenyang, is a government body that is concerned about the rise of juvenile crime in the country. Their studies show a strong link between juvenile crime and childhood emotional abuse. Our brief was to get the parents and teachers of Shenyang to understand that verbal abuse can have serious consequences for their children in later life.

We got six juvenile delinquents, all male, between the ages of 16 and 18, from the Shenyang Detention Center to narrate their stories. Artists then transformed the abusive words that had deeply scarred these young man during their childhood into the same weapons that they used to commit crimes in later years. The weapons were made of nickel-plated steel, to actual size so that they looked and felt like real weapons. We also made digital versions of the weapons for use on interactive touchscreens.

The word-weapons were shown at a two-day public exhibition, between March 26 and 27, 2014 in Shenyang. Over 600 people took part in the event directly and interacted with the weapons. The event was covered by local TV channels. The weapons were also made available on touchscreens and tablets.

The website (www.wordscanbeweapons.com) and WeChat both included a helpline for those who needed to talk to counsellors about parenting or emotional abuse issues.

326 calls were made to the helpline in the first two weeks, along with creating 3,112,315 impressions on the Center's Weibo topic page. Over 30 websites (including government official sites) and 9 TV stations carried reports of this important campaign.