Boys in the Making (UK)

Boys in the Making - St Helens Pilot Project (2025-2026)

Over the past year, we have been working with Fiona, Dannielle (Rialto Youth Project) and St Helens partners including Rainford High School to pilot the programme and create the first boy to be based in the UK.

This pilot forms part of an international action research and exchange programme with Create exploring how the Boys in the Making methodology can be adapted and developed in new places and contexts, and the resources and supports needed to do this.

Meet Jacob

Together with artist Josh Coates, teachers, the Heart of Glass team, and with ongoing mentoring and support from Fiona and Dannielle, twelve boys aged 12–14 from Rainford High School have taken part in a series of workshops exploring questions around friendship, identity, responsibility and belonging. Activities have included drawing, 3D map making, creative writing, role play and movement. Through this process, the group have created a boy called Jacob - or “Jake” to his mates - illustrated by artist Nick Daly. The boys are currently developing an artwork based on Jacob’s story, exploring his expectations, experiences and interactions as he engages with the world around him.

The wider project

Boys in the Making began in Dublin in 2019 and has grown through years of research, collaboration and artistic development with young people, youth workers, educators, artists and researchers. The project explores masculinity, care and how it is to be a boy in the world today.

To date 27 boy characters have been created, 19 of which have been made by groups of boys and young men aged between 5 - 18 years across Dublin as part of the Boys in the Making programme. So far 150 young people have been involved in this creative process, supported by seven artists in collaboration with schools, youth projects and afterschool projects across Dublin.

The Boys in the Making programme methodology has three phases. Phase 1 entitled ‘Enclosed Conversation’ sees groups engage in conversation, creative activity and collective making over time, to develop their character and imagine how he will navigate the world he lives in. Phase 2 ‘Public Address’ marks the movement from private to public, as groups consider which aspect of their boy’s story to make public, developing an artwork collectively that can be shared with identified publics. Phase 3 ‘Public Conversations’ opens up a wider conversation in response to this and others’ artworks, to explore how boys are shaped by society - and how they, in turn, shape it.

Themes that have emerged through the project to date include:

• Respect and dignity

• Dominance, power and violence

• Vulnerability, empathy and care

• Mental health and suicide

• Relationships, sexuality and gender

• Money and work

• Social media, pornography and the internet

• Social expectations and socialisation

• Masculinity and its intersections with class and race

After five years of research and work developing the programme in Dublin, Fiona Whelan and Dannielle McKenna and the wider project team were invited in 2023 by Heart of Glass to explore the potential of developing the programme with communities in St Helens. Together they would consider what was required to build the foundation and conditions for the work to take shape in a new place.

Looking ahead

Boys in the Making - St Helens is an early stage pilot helping us understand how this work might develop in the UK, and how collaborative arts practice can create space for open, honest and non-judgemental conversations with young men and boys about the lives they are living now - and the men they might become.

Alongside this, the Boys in the Making programme is expanding across Dublin and the UK, with multiple Boys in development. As part of our current collaboration (including a partnership with Create), we are supporting the development of a community of practice, to generate learning across the project teams, while creating professional development and learning resources to support future expansion and engagement with the programme.

Meet Jacob and the other boys from the wider project:
https://www.whatdoesheneed.com/boys/

Boys in the Making - International Exchange and Action Research programme has been developed by Fiona Whelan (artist and educator) and Dannielle McKenna (Rialto Youth Project) in collaboration with Heart of Glass and Create as part of an international learning and exchange residency supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Arts Council of Ireland through the International Residency Initiatives Scheme, 2026. It is part of This Place, This Stage an Arts Council England - supported Place Partnership.

Boys in the Making was developed in 2019 by Fiona Whelan and Rialto Youth Project, as part of the What Does He Need? project – a collaboration between Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers.
www.whatdoesheneed.com