Men's Makers

MEN'S MAKERS: PROJECT REPORT

3 MONTH SNAPSHOT

Kirsty Frankland

Men's Makers is one of WHALE Arts newest groups. Set up in response to a need identified by our social prescriber; and the aspirations of a group of local men who wanted a place to come together and to make.

Initially modelled on the Men's Shed movement, the group has evolved significantly as it has embraced a new group facilitator and adapted to the challenges of working in a shared space.

AIMS OUTCOMES & OUTPUTS The Men's Makers group aims to facilitate improved mental health and wellbeing for group members through engaging in making activities.

For us, improved mental health and wellbeing means reducing reported levels of anxiety, depression and social isolation. Increasing selfconfidence and self-esteem. Increasing social connectedness, positive relationships and sense of purpose within the community.

Out outcomes for group members include improved mental health, reduced social isolation and  skills development; Also improved links between participants and people from different sectors of society through

a series of cultural trips to meet artists, makers and designers - some of whom may be invited to work with participants to co-design sessions tailored to their needs and aspirations.

Our outputs include delivering 30 weekly sessions to a core group of up to 10 men, with an expected 15 - 20 men to engage with the project over a year.

We plan to take the group on 2 trips to other parts of Edinburgh, possibly makers studios or artist's workshops - to be decided on by group members, and invite guest artists to deliver 2Â specialist workshops over the 12-months - again to be decided on by group members.

METHODOLOGY We are using a range of methods to gather data and to collate evidence on the effectiveness of our approach.

We are using three well-being measures to capture quantitative data on different aspects of wellbeing. These include the Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) subjective well-being questions and the Social trust question.

We also do session evaluations and reflective focus group sessions which gives us rich qualitative data highlighting the benefits from the group members perspective. We collect wellbeing questionnaires and conduct reflective focus groups quarterly over the course of a year.

RESULTS Three months is too short a time-frame to effectively evaluate the impact of this approach on individual participants wellbeing and at this stage, we have only collected baseline data from our wellbeing questionnaires.

The Men's Makers group has had a number of challenges to overcome both in setting up and getting the group started which has also had an impact on group numbers and our ability to gather valid data at this stage.

What follows is an overview of how the group has developed, the challenges they've faced and the actions taken to overcome these challenges.

THE GROUP There are currently three members in the group. Despite having high numbers of referrals, the group has been deliberately kept small in the early stages, due to challenges relating to health and safety and setting up an appropriate workspace.

Since the group started in September, there have been X sessions and so far we have had an attendance rate of XX%. Members of the group have been on one trip to the Glasgow Sculpture workshops and the Kinesthetic Museum as part of a project run by the Edinburgh Art Festival.

CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS The first major challenge was that WHALE Arts has no dedicated workshop space for the group to meet, limited storage capacity and no suitable workbenches/desks for group members. In short, the group were going to have to design and build a mobile workspace that would include lockable storage for tools and individual projects, foldable desks for each group member and a heavy-duty but movable workbench for heavy-duty cutting, sawing, drilling etc.

WHALE Arts has one main art room but this was not suitable for the Men's Maker due to its high ceilings and proximity to office spaces making the use of power tools impossible.

The best space for the group to use was the performance space, a large multi-purpose room which the group now books for 4 hours every Wednesday.

Thanks to Roberton Construction who donated a large number of materials including sheets of 12mm plywood and a load of 4m 4x4 timbers, the group have now completed their first set of 4 mobile lockers, they have made a series of desks that can easily stack away and have started work on a mobile box to store all their hand tools.

These pieces have been designed to fit behind the curtain in the performance space and can be wheeled out and stored away again during and after their sessions.

The next challenge was the tools. Funding from One City Trust enabled the group to buy a range of power tools, which in turn helped them with the construction of their lockers, desks and mobile tool storage solutions.

Power tools come with an extra level of health and safety including detailed risk assessments, induction training and specific set-up and tat down procedures for each tool.

The group facilitator, an experienced sculptor and maker, wisely set aside time and brought in expert help to draft set-up and tat down procedures and design and deliver induction training for all group members and other key staff at WHALE Arts, this included specific health and safety considerations and procedures for the use and storage of each tool.

The combination of having to design and make their mobile workspace and develop health and safety procedures for all of their equipment from scratch gave an extra level of responsibility for the group facilitator and for this reason we deliberately kept the group small while the bulk of this work was completed.

The initial group members were all keen to get involved in large scale woodwork projects and some already had significant skills in this area.

Many of the potential new members were not interested in this sort of making so their entry to the group was put on hold until phase one of the project was completed and they had some workspace to explore other making activities.

CONCLUSION & FINAL REFLECTIONS The first 3 months/phase one of the Men's Makers group, has largely been focused on designing and building a mobile workspace and setting up robust health and safety procedures for the use of the space and tools.

An incredible collaboration between the group members and group facilitator has ensued, early indications suggest that this is having a positive impact on group members overall wellbeing and also on skills development.

In the new year, phase two will see the group opened up to new members, a broadening of the scope of making activities and it will also a time for collecting data which will allow us to better measure the success of this approach.