A crime scene was brought to life when students from University College Birmingham were called on to assist West Midlands Police with their new approach to disaster training.

WMP Casualty Bureau asked MA Prosthetics for Film and Television students to create a realistic scenario to help train officers dealing with the recovery of bodies and body parts within a disaster environment.

Until University College Birmingham joined forces with the police, simulation training had only been conducted using limited and aging prosthetics and sandbag-type dummies. The officers’ training had not been subjected to the use of stage blood previously and this was a real game changer.

The scene was set for an explosion at a music festival and students Lianne Fellows, Caprice Whitehead and Princy Kushwaha dressed the set, giving them valuable hands-on experience in managing a project, interpreting a brief and executing it on location.

Practical techniques learned by the students in their Casualty Simulation module were invaluable, enabling students to create bodies with a diverse range of skin tones and identifiable features such as tattoos, scars and jewellery.

The realism of the scene also prompted officers in training to consider the need for multiple PPE changes to avoid cross contamination, said Alexandra Wathey,  Senior Lecturer for Postgraduate Programmes - Creative Industries (BTCI), an important consideration that was not as apparent during training with older prosthetics and sandbag dummies.

“It was such a valuable collaboration for both parties and the students were excited to showcase their skills and rise to the challenge,” she said.

“What became apparent was that many people do not realise the extent and transferability of the skills that our prosthetic students have and as well as deceased simulations for DVI, bleeding casualties can be created on live people (or realistic dummies which can also be simulated to breathe or have fake beating organs etc), which opens up opportunities for more emergency services such as fire, ambulance and the armed forces to train too.

“From Madam Tussauds-like realistic mannequins to aliens, creatures and Theme-Park models, I am proud that our students can use their artistic talents, skills and knowledge to achieve brilliant creations for a vast range of scenarios.”

Find out more about University College Birmingham’s Prosthetics MA postgraduate degree and other related courses with the Department of Creative Industries.