
Men's sheds or community sheds are
non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
local
organisations that provide a space for
craft
A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale pr ...
work and
social interaction
A social relation is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more conspecifics within and/or between groups. The group can be a language or ...
. The movement originated in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
around the 1980s as a way to improve the health and wellbeing of older men. However some have expanded their remit to anyone regardless of age or gender, and have similar aims and functions to
hackerspaces. There are over 900 located across Australia, with thousands of active members. Men's sheds can also be found in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
,
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
,
Finland
Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
,
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
and
Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
.
The slogan for men's sheds is "Shoulder To Shoulder", shortened from "Men don't talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder", adopted after the 2008 Australian Men's Shed Association (AMSA) conference.
The users of men's sheds are known as "shedders".
In 2014, Professor Barry Golding coined the term "shedagogy" to describe "a distinctive, new way of acknowledging, describing and addressing the way some men prefer to learn informally in shed-like spaces mainly with other men." Sheds as a venue for mentoring other men and Inter-generational mentoring is a growing outcome. Academics are using men's sheds as a research venue and research partner in exploring men's health and social needs.
History
The men's shed movement originated in Australia. One of the precursors of the movement began in the 1980s in Broken Hill, New South Wales, involving former miners. Another was the Albury Manual Activities Centre, also known as "Albury Men's Shed" which opened in 1978.
Work in Adelaide, South Australia focused upon the gender biased and inappropriate care of older men living with dementia in care settings and work with Vietnam Veterans in South Australia also played its part.
Professor Barry Golding has researched the origins of the men's shed, and states "Maxine Chaseling was the key person behind 'The Shed' back in the early nineties and spoke of the stories behind the development of the Shed."
The first shed for men, was founded by Chaseling (formerly Maxine Kitto) in 1993. It was located in
Goolwa, South Australia as part of The Heritage Club, an activities/day centre for the older generations/elderly, where she was employed as the coordinator. The shed was opened on 3 March 1993
by the
Hon Dean Brown AO, Member for Alexandra, later to become Premier of South Australia.
Chaseling had worked in aged services for many years, and had spoken at many conferences in the late 1980s and 1990s about gerontology, men's health and the lack of services for men. She originally came up with the idea of a men's shed after her own father had become depressed and felt stuck at home after having a heart attack and not being able to work anymore. She noticed that the only thing that seemed to give her father purpose was to work in his shed. Having also noticed that the men at the Heritage Club seemed lost and not interested in the activities that the ladies were involved in, Chaseling thought she would create a men's shed at the Heritage Club to give the men a focus point for purpose, for mentoring younger generations, socialising, and ultimately to create better mental health outcomes. It worked, and the men's mental health levels improved, along with their levels of happiness.
At this point, the program was known as The Shed.
The Australian Men's Shed Association quotes Chaseling, as she talks about her role in starting the first shed: "I struck the match but fortunately it was the right time and the primary health strategy was simple and doable in any community".
After Chaseling had created the first men's shed, she spoke at conferences in the 1990s about how the men's shed was filling a gap in men's services. It is from this point that the men's shed movement started to grow, with the next shed located in nearby Langhorne Creek, South Australia.
The first national health conference dedicated to men in Australia took place in 1995.
The first men's shed (by that name) was opened in Tongala, Victoria, Australia on 26 July 1998. Named after its founder, Dick McGowan, the shed predates the Lane Cove Community Shed in New South Wales by just a few months, though both likely originated from ideas discussed at the National Rural Health Conference in 1995. Lane Cove Community Shed was opened in December 1998. As well as being a place for craftwork and socialisation, it also provided vital health information to its members.
These communal sheds were inspired by backyard
shed
A shed is typically a simple, single-storey (though some sheds may have two or more stories and or a loft) roofed structure, often used for storage, for hobby, hobbies, or as a workshop, and typically serving as outbuilding, such as in a bac ...
s, where a man would go and carry out tasks such as restoring furniture or fixing
lawn mowers. Men's sheds can also be seen as an extension of the original nineteenth century idea of
working men's clubs in the UK and Australia: "to provide recreation and education for working-class men and their families". In time working men's clubs increasingly focused on charitable work and recreational activities typically associated with
pubs. Whilst acting as hubs for information exchange, the community educational aspects foundered, as men's sheds remained in people's homes typically at the bottom of the garden.
Mensheds Australia was established in 2002 by Peter Sergeant and Ron Fox. It became clear an overarching infrastructure was needed to support men in establishing and managing their men's sheds in regional, rural and remote areas. It involved documenting practical information and knowledge, tools, checklists, processes and training materials while utilising modern technology. Much work was undertaken in establishing men's sheds in some of the remotest parts of Australia and in Indigenous communities. The
Australian Men's Shed Association was established in 2007 by the Australian independent community-based men's sheds to represent, support and promote the men's shed movement and to act as a central hub for information exchange. The Australian Men's Shed Association is funded by the federal government to provide initial and ongoing practical support for the development of all men's sheds.
The Irish Men's Sheds Association was established in 2011 and was the first shed association to be founded in the Northern Hemisphere. The member Sheds of the Irish Association are from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. One notable difference between the men's sheds in Australia and Ireland is the age demographic of the participating men; in Ireland men of all ages participate while in Australia it is mostly retired men. In February 2013 Westhill & Districts Men's Shed opened its doors as a constituted charity, to be the first men's shed following the Australian model in Scotland. The UK Men's Shed Association was established in 2013. The Scottish Men's Sheds Association was established in 2015.
By 2015, men's sheds were also active in a number of other countries, mainly based throughout Europe and
South Asia
South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...
. This included over one hundred men's sheds in New Zealand and over two hundred in Ireland.
By 2023, there were over 900 men's sheds across the UK. The United States has set up a national association, the US Men's Sheds Association, and had three sheds in Hawaii, Minnesota and Michigan by May 2017. In 2022, the Men's Sheds Canada association was formally created.
Categories
Sheds can have their own unique aims and focus on a certain subject. Men's sheds can be defined into five main categories. These categories are work,
clinic
A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary care needs ...
al, educational, recreational and communal.
Work sheds are for those who want to remain
active and have an overall goal. These sheds focus heavily on
restoration and
construction
Construction are processes involved in delivering buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities, and associated activities through to the end of their life. It typically starts with planning, financing, and design that continues until the a ...
, while helping the
local community. Clinical and communal have similar features, with the core of their aims focused on helping the local male community interact and discuss their health and wellbeing. Recreational men's sheds are created to help promote more
social activity in the local area.
Educational sheds are aimed at improving
skills
A skill is the learned or innate
ability
Abilities are powers an agent has to perform various Action (philosophy), actions. They include common abilities, like walking, and rare abilities, like performing a double backflip. Abilities are in ...
and qualities.
Virtual sheds provide an online capability where members from all men's sheds and other remote communities across the country or around the world can actively communicate and be involved in numerous research, writing and photographic activities. The International Historians Association has created a community shed for veteran responders which include police officers, firefighters,
paramedic
A paramedic is a healthcare professional trained in the medical model, whose main role has historically been to respond to emergency calls for medical help outside of a hospital. Paramedics work as part of the emergency medical services (EMS), ...
s,
rescue workers and the military who have injuries, incapacities or disfigurements that make them immobile or unwilling to join local work sheds.
Health and wellbeing
One of the main reasons for the creation of men's sheds was to improve the overall health of the older male
population of Australia. "Men's sheds have been described as a male-friendly service providing a 'health by stealth' approach". Research acknowledges the positive role that sheds can have in "addressing the gendered health disparity that males face".
Barry Golding argues that men sheds help address imbalances in healthcare outcomes that affect men.
Men have worse health outcomes across all age groups than females in most Western countries. Concern has been expressed that a lack of support for older men and associated lack of visibility hampers progress due to limited research. Longitudinal studies of men's sheds and their impact are missing. Sheds can also help counter negative cultural, social and ideological attitudes towards men.
One area where men's sheds are seen to be making a difference is in the diagnosis and treatment of
diabetes
Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th ...
. Men are at higher risk of un-diagnosed and un-treated diabetes as well as having higher rates of diabetes. In Ireland the national men's sheds association is working with Diabetes Ireland, health care providers and professionals to address male diabetes. The growing links between men's health and sheds is identified in literature for practitioners.
Men's sheds are also directly involved in supporting men with
dementia
Dementia is a syndrome associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform activities of daily living, everyday activities. This typically invo ...
and
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...
, especially in the early stages. Alzheimer's Australia NSW helped develop initiatives through their "Every Bloke Needs a Shed" pilot project.
Research supports the value of men's sheds to the shedders themselves. 2007 research found the following;
* 99.5% of men, "I feel better about myself"
* 97%, "I have a place where I belong"
* 97%, "I can give back to the community"
* 97%, "I am doing what I really enjoy"
* 90%, "I feel more accepted in the community"
* 79%, "I get access to men's health information"
* 77%, "I feel happier at home"
Approximately 30% of shedders are disabled.
The positive aspects of the shed environment are often linked to peer support, learning and how "Each shed participant is both a teacher and a learner ...".
Support and funding
The
Australian Government
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government or simply as the federal government, is the national executive government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The executive consists of the pr ...
has acknowledged the social importance of men's sheds for a number of years. They have now been actively promoting and
funding
Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm use ...
men's sheds projects. Men's sheds are now part of the
local community in many parts of Australia, and are becoming part of its
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
. This has led in recent times for them to also be supported
regionally and funded by local and regional
organisations and councils.
Other countries where men's sheds are becoming popular have also recognized their social & health benefits. Ireland acknowledged and promoted them in their National Men's Health Policy 2008-13.
Men's sheds are funded through a number of specialist charities, private investment and government sources.
See also
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References
Further reading
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* {{Cite book , last1=Ostrouch-Kamińska , first1=Joanna , title=Private World(s): Gender and Informal Learning of Adults , last2=Vieira , first2=Cristina C. , publisher=SensePublishers , year=2015 , isbn=978-94-6209-971-5 , series=Research on the Education and Learning of Adults , location=Rotterdam
DIY culture
Men's health
Men's organizations
Men's quarters
Social enterprises
1978 introductions