I AM ME Scotland are an extraordinary company, changing attitudes and behaviours so that disabled and vulnerable people can feel safe within their communities.
So, I was delighted when Carol Burt-Wilson (MBE) Manager and Founder and Mhairi O’Rourke Development Coordinator agreed to include our Many Good Men educator pack on their learning platform!
Many Good Men is a participant-led digital forum theatre project, where young people create the story of a footballer drawn into online radicalisation. Professionally produced in football clubs, audiences get the opportunity to step into the action – using digital tools and live interventions to change the outcome.
This vital project opens urgent conversations about healthy masculinity, why some men are vulnerable to radicalisation and how communities can respond.
The pack aims to give anyone who works with young people much needed information about what ‘the manosphere’ is, what language and mimes it uses and crucially it has a wide variety of creative tools and resources that can be used to address the influence of the ‘manosphere’ with the young people you work with and/or care for.
We believe that creativity offers everyone a framework to approach hugely taboo and challenging subjects like masculinity, mental health, sexuality, gender and violence with a greater sense of freedom and safety. Through imagining what a fictional character might do you can rehearse what you might do, without exposing yourself as much to judgement and criticism.
At the heart of the pack is a 23-minute video we made about the creation of the first two Many Good Men performances, staged at Hearts football club. We worked separately with a group of young women at Gillespie’s High School and a group of young men at Passion 4 Fusion youth club. They created characters who ‘go down the rabbit hole’ of online content that promotes misogynistic violence. Through that process the participants thought deeply and critically about the structure and design of the internet, the history of misogyny and their own experiences and the pressures they feel.
Carol and Mhairi worked with us to make the pack more accessible, encouraging us to film four more shorter videos that give insights into the characters allowing people to process this difficult subject in bite-sized chunks. Additionally, the pack is audio-described by Anthony O’Neil, one of the actors in the shows both in Edinburgh and more recently at Dunfermline Football Club. These options all provide alternative ways of accessing the material, meaning it is available to far more people.
It’s really important to us that this work is made accessible as possible, and its availability on I Am Me’s platform has moved us much closer to this goal.
– Clare Duffy, Civic Digits Artistic Director and Founder