Men's sheds in Australia: Learning through community contexts

Men’s sheds organisations are typically located in shed or workshop-type spaces in community settings that provide opportunities for regular hands-on activity by groups deliberately and mainly comprising men. They have recently proliferated across parts of southern Australia with higher proportions of older men not in work.

• Men’s sheds are particularly successful in attracting older men that have proved difficult to engage through conventional health, employment, education and training initiatives. Many of these older men are facing issues associated with significant change, including ageing, health, retirement, isolation, unemployment, disability and separation.
   
• They provide mateship and a sense of belonging through positive and therapeutic informal activities and experiences with other men. Men’s sheds achieve positive health, happiness and wellbeing outcomes for men who participate, as well as for their partners, families and communities.
   
• Men’s sheds confirm the preferences of older men for hands-on, practical learning styles, more similar to those found in adult and community education (ACE) compared with those in formal education settings.
   
• Men’s sheds have more to do with producing non-vocational benefits and rarely provide direct vocational pathways to future paid work.
   
• Being heavily reliant on volunteers, men’s sheds often struggle to cope with the initial costs, regulations and complexities associated with establishing a safe working environment and procuring funding to assist with coordination and supervision of participants. Despite the limitations in funding, men’s sheds have grown in number; however, the impact on future growth and sustainability is uncertain.

‘Men’s sheds’ organisations are typically located in shed or workshop-type spaces in community settings that provide opportunities for regular hands-on activity by groups deliberately and mainly comprising men. Men’s sheds in community organisations are shown to be a relatively new, diverse and poorly known set of community-based, grass-roots organisations—found only in Australia. These informal spaces and programs in community settings have grown recently and rapidly in parts of mainly southern Australia with a higher proportion of older men not in paid work. Men’s sheds are typically organised by, and legally constituted through, existing community organisations. They usually provide a woodworking workshop space, tools and equipment and an adjacent social area in a public, shed-type setting. Some include a metalwork area and/or an adjacent garden.

This research examines the effectiveness and importance of community-based men’s sheds in Australia, focusing particularly on ways in which the nature and organisation of these sheds affect the informal learning experiences and lives of the men who use them. It includes consideration of the rationales for creating these masculine spaces in community contexts for groups of men, including a profile of use and the nature of the learning activities as well as men’s experiences, benefits and outcomes from participating. Data were collected by on-site interview and survey (N=211) from a sample of 24 of approximately 125 men’s sheds in five Australian states open in July 2006. Despite their diverse origins, locations, configurations, legally constituted organisations and purposes, men’s sheds organisations are shown to share a common commitment to older men’s friendship, health and wellbeing in conjunction with regular and supervised hands-on activity in group settings in a shed-type space for both individual and community benefit. They run a variety of informal programs and activities for mostly retired, unemployed or isolated older men, typically through health, aged care, adult education, church, war veterans or local government organisations. Importantly, one-half of men are not members of any other community organisation.

Half of the men who participate are over 65 years of age. Most are recently retired or involuntarily withdrawn from the paid workforce. One in five men are war veterans. Around one in five are unable to obtain paid work, though expect to do so. Three-quarters are on some type of pension. Older, retired men who participate are significantly more likely to be living with a partner and have experienced less significant recent changes in their lives in terms of their health, wellbeing, security and financial status than younger single men who participate. Men not living with a partner tend to be somewhat younger, less likely to be retired and more likely to have experienced significant and recent difficulties with their health and wellbeing. The support of a partner appears to provide a buffer to support older, retired men against debilitating changes—including when work finishes and/ or health deteriorates—in ways that are not available to many separated and isolated younger men. For many older married and retired men, the men’s shed provides a welcome and positive circuit-breaker for both men and women from the ‘underfoot syndrome’ in the family home, particularly where the man has recently experienced retirement or unemployment. In the past five years around one-half of participants have experienced retirement or a major health crisis and one-quarter have experienced what they self-define as some form of significant loss. While around one-half of men heard about the shed through friends, around one-third of men were referred to the shed by a health or welfare worker. Men who are referred to the shed through a health or welfare worker take part regularly but less frequently than other men and are significantly more likely to need support to improve their health, work status and relationships.

Men aged over 65 years are significantly more likely than younger men to go to the shed for social reasons. While not having access to a private shed where they live is one factor affecting some men, a need for the friendship of other men in a place that affirms positive aspects about being men would appear to be the most important factor that leads men to participate. Men particularly enjoy and benefit from the lack of compulsion, opportunities for mentoring and sociability associated with the shed as well as a strong sense of belonging and improving their health and wellbeing. Men particularly enjoy the opportunity to ‘get out of the house’, and almost all ‘feel at home’ in the shed. Men experience a range of very positive benefits as a result of participating. They feel better about themselves, are happier at home, have a strong sense of belonging and enjoyment and greatly appreciate the opportunity to be accepted by, and give back to, the community through what they make and do. Most men are also positive about the enhanced opportunity to informally get access to men’s health information.

Approximately one-third of the sheds are available to both men and women. However, most sheds have relatively few women participating. Women are not welcome in around one-third of the sheds, and in the remaining third they are welcome as visitors. The attitudes of men towards women participants, and the shed policies on women participating, reflect this split. Men who need more training on the shed equipment are significantly less likely to feel comfortable if women participate in the shed. Women typically play an important and valuable role in ensuring the sheds run smoothly but are usually deliberately detached from the men’s workshop activities. Men’s sheds are particularly welcoming of new members and most provide resources for wider community use. The high proportion of gentle and caring older men who use men’s sheds contradict several of the prevailing masculinist stereotypes that men are overly competitive and unsupportive.

Many of the men’s shed participants have the relatively limited formal school and post-school education and training backgrounds typical of older men, although 40% are former qualified tradesmen. Around 30% of the men had positive recollections of formal learning and 15% had attended a formal learning program in the last year. The men’s sheds participants enjoy the opportunity to informally learn and share leisure, technical, trade, craft, safety or health skills. While skills that transfer directly to paid work are seen to be relatively minor by most men, the opportunity to learn such skills is regarded as positive and valuable for those men with the intention of re-entering paid work.

Around three-quarters of men were interested in some form of further learning through the shed. Preferred learning styles are via hands-on, practical situations, preferably in informal contexts where they can meet other people, learn and mentor in groups with other men. Men’s sheds tend to already match the informal learning needs and preferences of this older demographic of participants, one in four of whom experience difficulties with their learning skills. Any further learning should be informal and facilitated ‘in house’, ideally from and with other participants with the necessary skills in the same shed setting. While men who participate in men’s sheds are positive about technical and further education (TAFE) for the wider community, most consider it does not offer anything they need to learn and around half would not feel comfortable going there.

Men’s sheds organisations are highly reliant on committed volunteers and a small number of tenuous funding sources. As sheds are becoming more known and planned, strategic and networked, they are grappling with issues associated with establishment, funding and occupational health and safety. While most sheds have a supervisor whose responsibility is regarded as important by participants, it is also seen to be important that men have input into the type and scheduling of activities and running of the shed.

Activities similar to that provided by men’s sheds will become increasingly important as the progressive ageing of the Australian population leads to the extension of working lives as well as lives post-work. Because of their increased longevity, men will be in retirement and semi-retirement longer, strengthening the need for policies of lifelong learning to extend beyond economic purposes to include social and personal purposes required to maintain independence and autonomy in an increasingly complex society. Men’s sheds produce significant, non-vocational benefits through informal, collective, community involvement. The programs and spaces certainly encourage and perpetuate men’s workshop-based, hands-on, trade skills typical of wood and metal workshops in TAFE and pay close attention to compulsory occupational health and safety practices. However, the current emphasis in sheds is low on formal and current industry competencies for working in contemporary industry workplaces. They rarely provide direct vocational pathways to future paid work.

By virtue of the situated nature of the informal learning that they encourage in community settings, men’s sheds model learning styles are similar to those found in adult and community education (ACE). What is different is that they deliberately create an area for socialisation in a men’s workshop rather than a house or learning centre designed primarily for and by women. For this reason some ACE organisations, particularly in Tasmania and Victoria, are successfully complementing their provision and encouraging older men’s learning by creating a men’s shed separate from or parallel to their community centre or neighbourhood house-type organisation.

Our key finding is that for older men, active participation in communities of practice is possibly more conducive to learning than involvement or enrolment in formal education TAFE or ACE. Shed-based activity provides an important, positive and therapeutic male-positive context that satisfies a wide range of needs not currently available in more formal learning settings. Men’s sheds provide a voluntary social and community outlet for older retired men, particularly for former tradesmen. They provide new opportunities for men of all ages to pool their considerable skills and experiences for mutual and community benefit.

Men’s sheds are shown to cater informally but very effectively for the mainly non-vocational social, health, wellbeing and learning needs of mainly older men and a small number of women. Their main benefit is that they cater for the holistic as well as the specific, often acute, needs of an otherwise difficult-to-reach group of older and sometimes isolated men—typically experiencing complex and difficult changes in their working lives, status and identity, their physical and mental health, their relationships and identities as men. In doing so, they contribute significantly and positively to the wellbeing of their partners, families and communities in situations where paid work is either desired but not available or not feasible because of retirement or ill health.