In essence the project began with a presentation of an example mystery which the students were then asked to solve. Having worked through this example murder, the bulk of the student's time is then spent working in small groups to devise their own mystery. Having devised a mystery, the students present it to their peers before setting about solving another group’s mystery. The project culminates in a court case where each group takes its suspected murderer to trial, a process which draws on all the work completed across the project.
Once the murder had been solved by the students, they were introduced to the project and to the practitioners (also known as team leaders). Students were split into groups with their allocated team leaders and tasked with devising a murder of their own over the coming weeks.
Initially drama was used in order for the young people to develop plots and characters. By the end of the first day each group had developed and decided on a plot and motive.
The following day, they were introduced to the different types of evidence that they could build into their mysteries. This was dictated by the elements of the curriculum that the school wished to deliver through this project. The young people were shown how they could use soil samples, blood samples, shoe imprints, and finger prints as clues. Additionally they were shown how musical clues and maths based clues (e.g. distance/speed/time equations) could be built into the mysteries.
Over the following two weeks, the students created their mysteries. This necessitated team work, negotiation and a great deal of creativity. Not only did a murder need to be complicated and intriguing, but it also had to be solvable. Young people were given complete creative license to develop mysteries as they saw fit. The only stipulation made by Labyrinth was that every murder must be solvable and all the information and evidence must be presented. Additionally, each character has a background card which contains factual information about them, as well as a witness statement which contains their subjective account of what happened. The nature of the murder, the evidence left behind, and the presentation is dictated by the students.
In order to assemble these mysteries students are advised to produce time-lines for each character to gain clarity on each character’s movements. They are also invited to build a ‘murder matrix’ which is a grid with each character along the top and a list down the side containing evidence headings which may or may not link them to the crime. Very simply a tick or cross is provided for each character against each heading. The character with the most ticks is likely to be the guilty party. This proved a useful tool in ensuring that the murders were solvable, yet allowed students to logically incorporate enough red herrings and inconclusive evidence that a thorough investigation would be required.
Time was spent using hot-seating, a drama technique to develop witness statements. Among many other practices, ICT was used to produce background cards, casts of footprints were created in the art rooms, and media was used to create evidence such as CCTV footage. Mathematics was incorporated by the young people to prove that someone either could or could not have been there. In the science lab microscopes and PH kits were used to produce fingerprints and soil sample clues.
In this process the students decided how to put together the murders and teacher assumes the role of an ‘expert resource’ rather than ‘teacher’. Indeed teachers were asked to actively participate in the sessions as a CPD exercise rather than simply observe. For example the Mathematics teacher provided a brief session on how to use the distance speed time calculation, and the science teacher provided a session on how to use PH kits to compare soil acidity levels.
Once the 'murder scene' had been completed the groups passed their mystery on to one of the other 5 Groups, whose responsibility it was to 'solve' the allocated crime. This presentation took the form of physical evidence, witness statements, reconstructions, news reports and various other hints and red-herrings as to who the killer was. Then, utilising all of the skills developed during the project (e.g. soil pH testing, fingerprint analysis, distance/speed/time equations etc), the evidence was sifted through, proven or disproved, entered into the Murder Matrix thus pointing squarely to one individual per crime.
Once a culprit had emerged it was then time to prepare for court!
The day of reckoning arrived and all groups had to give an opening statement as to who, where, why, when and how their suspect had committed the murder. A judge, a court official and a jury were all present to make sure all legal happenings were above board. The final presentations were of an extremely high standard and almost all of the suspects were guilty and charged with a suitable sentence.
