Men’s Sheds

Mike Jenn writes about an inspiring initiative

Recently a New York Times journalist interviewed me about the Men’s Sheds movement and how it started. We were in the room that our ‘Shed’ hires from a community centre, which is fitted out with workbenches and cupboards full of tools, tat and discarded materials we have acquired.

It feels like the caricature garden shed where the man resorts to make and mend, paint or potter, only it’s 700 square feet and a community. We have had up to fifteen people working there, coming when and for however long they wish, doing projects they choose, whether for their own use or for the wider community.

We have gained a greater sense of purpose and achievement from our work; we have learned skills and about life from each other; and we have had much more social interaction. All this happens in densely populated Camden in the city of London.

Reaching retirement age

So, how did it come about? My work-life has focused on helping the distressed. Many Friends will know of me for picking up the fading threads of the Bedford Institute Association and weaving them into Quaker Social Action. In 2010 I was thinking about what I could work on after I’d reached the state retirement age, prompted by the same motivation, when my son in Sydney suggested I look at the website of the Australian Men’s Shed Association.

It was inspiring to read that groups of men had come together around the Shed idea and worked through all obstacles to meet their own needs. With an average age of sixty-eight, many of those needs related to retirement: the loss of your mates, role, routine, a place to go, skills to use and pass on – though other life events, like bereavements, health failures and children moving away, would also be playing a part.

Beyond these life events there is a deeper issue. Men, in my view, have to believe they can look after themselves; whether this is from ‘hunter-gatherer genetics’ or daily life from the school playground to not being a mug, it means you can’t be seen to be weak or in need in the company of other men. Some call it male pride. It is why ‘men never go to the doctors’ (we do when we can’t cope anymore). It is why ‘men never admit to being lost’ and so on.

‘Shedders’

The same factor means that often we can’t talk to each other about what matters. One of the two ‘Shedders’ present at the interview told of an evening spent in the pub with three mates talking the usual football, politics, work and so on. Later he learned that one was being made redundant, another had a threatening health diagnosis and the third was being seriously threatened over money, but not once was any of this mentioned – nor had he (a head teacher) mentioned his fears for his own marriage.

The other Shedder present had worked in the building trade all his life. He had lived for the drink and smoking and the chat that followed each day. His wife left him, he suffered throat cancer and, with all his past social life curtailed (‘the doctor said I’d be wasting his time’), he had been dozing his way through life, barely getting up until he was told about the Shed. He hadn’t been able to talk about this issue, of course, but now he does, and he is the main source of ‘know how’ for others, a safety supervisor and a continuous source of ‘joshing’ and swearing.

In the months after reading about what the Shed idea could do for men my initial excitement turned to a resolve: to develop a Shed locally and beyond that to start a national movement.

Self-determination

Men do not attend publicly-funded community and education services anything like as much as women, partly due to what is offered and because it is offered in ways that do not account for their need for self-determination and high levels of autonomy. A view, of course, could be taken that men who feel that their only choice outside the home is between the pub and the betting shop have only themselves to blame – and for not saying that a more fitting and beneficial solution would be for men to organize themselves.

If I could encourage men to form communities, find a venue, to cooperate over skills, tools, space and ideas, as well as to be companions to each other, then there was the potential for the spirit in which those men lived to be raised. Once those ideas took root I was ‘on a mission’. What has followed has been five years of intense voluntary work mixed with absorbing hours figuring out how to make things in my Shed.

Initially, two friends and I formed an unincorporated association and hired the room that the Camden Town Shed occupies today. We built the benches, got donations of tools, scavenged for wood, publicised, opened the doors and welcomed whoever turned up. If we had needed any encouragement, the fourth person to arrive later said that he had been suicidal. The Shed was equipped largely for woodworking and, fortunately, someone with more than my DIY skills came along. The Shed opened two days a week, from 10am until 4pm, in April 2011, three days after I ‘retired’.

A national association

Throughout this early stage I recorded the decisions made and why (for example, to allow women on one day per week), what policies and practices we had to adopt, the issues that arose and the amount of work it took to keep the Shed going. After a year I wrote a website describing Sheds and what I had learned. In these earliest days I took calls from individuals from anywhere and did my best to link them up.

The following year, in March 2013, I invited all Sheds to form a national association to promote and support Shed development, by which time there were twenty-six open or being planned. A year later we hired some help, momentum gathered, partners joined in and today Sheds are opening at the rate of just over three a week. There could be a thousand Sheds before 2021, averaging perhaps twenty members each and mostly formed by groups of men coming together to make each happen.

Each Shed community is different, as each builds on the interests of its members, in the size of spaces they acquire (from 300-5,000 square feet) as well as how often they can open. While most will do some woodworking, there are over forty different activities in Sheds, with perhaps the most spectacular outcome being the building of a roadworthy car for under £750.

Men’s Sheds are a largely grassroots movement, driven by felt needs rather than policies. They address many needs from the simple – a workbench, tools and materials – to deeper needs for identity and belonging, for learning from your peers and for using your skills to contribute to the wider community.

If we can support more of those who need it to come together, to work ‘shoulder to shoulder’, then who can say what limit there is to the potential?

Further information: www.menssheds.org.uk

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