Bright Sparks theatre company is led by a group of adults with a variety of special education needs and disabilities. They performed a play about hate crime and mate crime called Real Friends.

The adults told their personal stories about their experiences of hate crime and mate crime and acted out those scenarios with participation from the children in years 5 and 6. The adults stopped the scene at various times to ask how the actors felt at that moment in the scene and asked the children what had gone wrong and what could be done differently to prevent it happening again. The actors then replayed the scene with what should have happened and asked the children if that was better and what they thought was better.

The children showed real empathy for anyone who may be a victim of hate and mate crime. Many commented on how emotional they felt about the subject.