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‘It’s a shame, because there are so many young people all over this city who are disintegrating into nothing, when they can be evolving into their wildest dreams. I mean that.’ – Farrell O Lideadha, Creative Space participant
BEING A YOUNG person can be difficult – battling with emotions, parental control, trying to find out who you are, and figuring out your focus in life.
Add that to living in an area that has its own social issues, and times can be tough. For young men in Ballymun, there can be many assumptions made about what sort of people they are.
But a recent project in the area’s Axis: Ballymun arts and community centre, called Creative Space, has helped not only to show the huge potential that local young men offer, but given them a chance to explore their creative side in a new and empowering way.
Eoin Thompson (17) is a hip hop artist from Finglas who took part in Creative Space, which he heard about from a friend. He didn’t know what to expect when he headed into his first meeting last year.
“If you were sitting in that room that day you’d know why it was so hard to convey what was going on. It sends shivers up my spine,” he told TheJournal.ie.
Thompson recalled going in, “palms sweaty”, and discovering older people talking without ‘boundaries or blocks’.
To see a group of young men just being normal and speaking about what’s going on in their minds… it’s shocking.
He and his fellow Creative Space participants – aged from 17 – 23 – were mentored by Terry McMahon (director of the film Patrick’s Day), John Connors (Love/Hate actor), Maverick Sabre (UK-based rap artist), Lethal Dialect and Damien Dempsey.
The process started off with trying to get the young men out of their comfort zone. They did workshops with the mentors, exploring different means of creativity.
Dealing with mental health issues was a byproduct of attending Creative Space, said Thompson.
“We went there not with the intention of getting stuff off our chest – I went with the intention of being around people like [the mentors],” he said. But as they got to know each other, the chat got deeper.
On top of that, the creative ideas started flowing. “I would walk in fuzzy-minded, I would try to write a song and I couldn’t write. [After it finished] I would walk past people rapping. It’s amazing, it’s so powerful to walk out of something like that.”
The mentorship helped him move from taking his cues from his musical heroes to developing his own style.
When I went to the Axis it was like going to meditation… It’s honestly, it’s just crazy but it just blows you out of the water, your mind isn’t about that anymore.
You’re focused on what you want to do, what you want to get out of what you are preparing to create.
‘I would be locked up for selling drugs’
Thompson was bullied in school, but says this experience, tough as it was, helped change the direction of his life.
“If that hadn’t happened, I would be locked up for selling drugs, I would be robbing cars, I would be doing anything those guys outside my front door are doing,” he said. Being pushed away from that made him see things differently.
“When you see that you grow up so fast in your own mind. When you see the impact of what those people do and when you hear them in school the next day talking about what they’ve done and what they’ve done to people, how much they don’t care… You start to realise. You start to get into the mind of people… Everybody is all ‘act the hard man’ and be the coolest person. They put on a front that they enjoy what they’re doing.”
He thinks of Creative Space as something which would benefit not just young men, but people across the country.
I think if everybody knew of places like this and people were more open to express themselves, Ireland as whole would be changed completely because of how people would interact with people on a daily basis.
But Thompson said that it can be difficult for teenagers to find out about places like Creative Space. He said if he hadn’t found out, “I would be doing the same things I was doing three years ago, and probably going down the wrong path. Not knowing there was people with the same mindset and same goals as me and wanting to do something that would set us apart.”
When he started going to Axis, Thompson wasn’t confident, even though he was brought up to speak out. Axis helped build his confidence to the point where he “could stand in a room in front of thousands of people and speak my mind”.
It also helped him deal with and express the nagging thoughts that sometimes bother him. “It breaks the zone where you are sitting in isolation. When you’re sitting in your room before you go to sleep. [And] everyone wonders why you can’t go to sleep at night.”
The process has changed him: He listens more. ”Going to Creative Space I’ve noticed myself, talking to people, I’ve more emphasis on what I say,” he said. There’s “more meaning” to his words. He “really want[s] to send a message” with what he says.
“Places like the Axis – they should be everywhere, they should be mandatory,” said Thompson.
I tried to talk about it, people in my class they laugh at me. [But] I know they have them thoughts. Because where we live, Finglas, Ballymun, any area that is impoverished, that has crime and punishment… Everyone has that thought that they can’t say something because they will be judged by someone else.
“Most had the hoodies on and heads down and not knowing each other”
Emma Connors, one of the organisers of Creative Space and whose background is in social work, explained that the HSE-funded project had 25 participants in its first year, with an extra 10 in the second year.
The project ended last November with a creative conference organised by the young men themselves.
But the work wasn’t done – Axis commissioned Anna Ebeling to take portraits of the men, and these portraits have been exhibited in the wider Ballymun community as part of what’s being called the Men’s Collection.
Axis has been doing work like this since 2007, but wanted to focus on a men-only project to see what would come out of it. “Many of [the participants] wouldn’t have considered themselves creative,” said Connors. “It offered something they hadn’t been offered before.”
She recalled the first day:
Most had the hoodies on and heads down and not knowing each other. A couple of them didn’t even know what they were there for.
Some of them are happy, some aren’t; some have fab families, some don’t. They have become way more in tune with themselves. They have been learning how to talk and have opinions and write it down on paper.
Connors describe it as like “a young men’s shed”, where the local men (as well as men from Finglas and Drogheda) have met creative mentors who have been “very honest about their own mental health”.
Taking part are men in college, young men who have left school before their leaving cert, those who have mental health difficulties, those who have had to leave friends behind to live their own life.
There is, said Connors, “real honesty about that and real awakening”.
There are a lot of assumptions about these young men but I think they’ve taken themselves by surprise at how articulate they are.
This type of work is at the core of Axis’s remit. It turns 15 this year. “Our whole purpose is to be of purpose to Ballymun and the people who work here,” said Connors.
The Creative Space work is being carried on through the Men’s Collection, and Connors is working on getting Anne Ebeling’s portraits exhibited on buildings across Dublin city centre this summer.
“I’d like to see them on buildings where young men are underestimated and stereotyped,” said Connors.
Some of the participants in Creative Space are now taking part in a new pilot programme where they musically mentor people with intellectual disabilities.
“They’ve been through a process, it’s about them paying it forward and what kind of relationship can they have with Axis.”
‘It has fundamentally changed me’
In feedback when the project finished, one participant said:
We want people to know men have feelings that we are told not to feel growing up. Here on this project is where I finally learned to feel. Being at Axis has fundamentally changed me.
Another said that thanks to Creative Space:
I feel alive.
The Men’s Collection, featuring photographs by Anne Ebeling, is at Axis Ballymun until 27 April.
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No study was really needed here.
Definitely no study needed, it’s already well known. I have a female gamer tag name, I wish I made a gender neutral one when I created it but I also don’t see the point in changing a gamer name I like due to some eejits targeting me for being a good female gamer just because I bruised their ego. Muting them is the best option for online gaming and deleting inappropriate messages as soon as they arrive in the inbox.
I’m a gamer, but as a bunch, gamers really are horrible. I only use my mic with people I know in real life. Otherwise I mute everybody.
@elaine You think that’s bad. You should see the male on male abuse. Don’t know how many times I have received online abuse from other gamers when you beat them. I’m not easily offended so I take it in good stride. Its great crack beating people online & they get all wound up LOL.
At least you don’t get pictures of other males bits and pieces though Graham, with obnoxious messages of rape. I know what messages other males get, I have male friends, male or female it’s not ok.
Wow yeah that’s too much. I don’t understand morons who do that. I’ll just send a pic of my knob to some random woman on the internet. Yeah she will definitely like that. Idiots. Did you report them for it?
Yeah I have through the xbox itself and emailing xbox support but to be honest I don’t think it’s taken very seriously, it’s happened a good few times to me. I’m 28 so I can let it over my head even when the messages are frightening but I do pity younger girls and boys who no doubt receive messages of that nature. I just hope parents are savvy enough to monitor contact that’s been made to kids on xbox live like their childrens activity on the computer.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. They don’t know what age the people they are sending the pics to are. Just block & report them I suppose. Your right Xbox probably don’t do a whole lot about it. I guess I’m lucky not to get them kind of pics from weirdos
But then again parents buy their children games that are over 15s or over 18s and they play those games online. You wouldn’t let your young kid watch a film with those age certs so why some let their kid play a game with the same cert? Gaming safety and responsibility should be thought to parents. haha this has gone off topic slightly. :)
Yeah parents definitely need to take more responsibility with the kind of games they get their kids. But also they could be mammy & daddies games that the kids are putting on when the parents are away. Your right this has gone off topic slightly. We need to finish this conversation over coffee :-)
In summary: 12 year old boys get mad because some girls are better than them at Call of Duty.
I’m on level 2 of snake. Chuffed.
Rule 16: there are no girls on the Internet.
The also probably live in their mothers basement and drink Mountain Dew by the bucket.
Its not a basement, it’s a command centre!!
Insert slow clap gif
Women gamers everywhere throw their hands up and say “we told you so!” Lol.
As I pointed out already on the Sen Higgins story; you get less abuse than men. Lol.
You say that the results of this study could be applied to other forums where people can act anonymously, like Youtube and Reddit.
Why is this the case? The research concludes that people who were doing badly in game were more likely to be aggressive towards females. What does this have to do with those sites? There’s no link.
Well I see online hostility towards women everyday but do hold out for a research experiment to prove it first.
It concluded that low status males have more to lose to competitive females. They are already struggling against better males in whatever task they are trying to complete and that is made all the more difficult by the introduction of females who may be better than them also. So they react negatively to this.
This could apply to many areas of society.
I don’t see online hostility towards women everyday.
I see hostility to both men and women online.
The link is that anonymity is common to the three. In a gaming environment, the sexist attitude can go unpunished and the same anonymity exists in youtube and probably to a greater extent in reddit, where throwaway accounts are even more common again.
As a generalised statement, I personally think this is a pretty useful study. Obviously people who openly abuse others online are losers but to gather evidence that they are worse at games which involve strategy is pretty interesting.
Halo might seem a simple point and click shooter, but better players are predictive & strategic. Proving that sexist flamers are effectively dumber at the games is an interesting statement.
Fozz, these two claims are pretty different.
The research shows that gamers tend to be more negative towards women when they have a *bad kill/death ratio* on a *videogame*. That’s it.
You’re not able to conclude from that limited knowledge that the same thing happens on social media sites, seeing as videogames and social media are fundamentally different environments (one being predominantly male, for one).
In what way can someone “do badly” on a social media site like they can on a scoreboard for a video game? They’re completely separate discussions.
It is interesting. I hope this insight can be used to help curb antisocial behaviour online.
Ciarán, you’re misinterpreting what the study actually found. It doesn’t show that the people who were ‘harassing’ (this is unclear – it says negative behaviour) women were worse at the game.
It may be the case that because the players were doing badly, they decided to take their anger out on the women they heard on voice chat. This doesn’t mean that they are actually worse at the game. The study is actually pretty careful not to explicitly claim that this is the case.
@Scarr. Exactly. I doubt the same eejits propose a toast to their opponents success when they loose to a male.
@malachi video games are anonymous social mediums too. If you want examples or the sort of vicious sexual aggressive abuse that you hear about being directed at celebs on twitter etc, check out the origins of the “Gamergate” scandal too.
Gaming may be male dominated, but aggressive sexism is a big issue there too.
Establishing and assigning traits to those who commit such abuses is the first step towards eradicating it.
The lessons which can be learned across such massive sample sizes can prove invaluable in fighting online abuse on all mediums. There’s a generation of kids coming who need to be taught how to interact on the Internet and we need the tools to direct the teachings.
Gamergate was to do with ethcial standards in video game journalism. Any harassment stemming from it was irrelevant to the goals of the movement and was condemned by those in the movement wherever it sprang up. Not relevant to what we’re discussing.
Woah, you say “massive sample sizes”? I don’t know if you’ve read many of these research papers but 160 odd games with 1-3 participants in each game is certainly NOT large. It is actually quite small for a study of this type.
Malachi, in halo, negative behaviour on voice comms can only really be in the form of harassment.
And sample of 189 incidents, ok, not massive, but certainly statistically significant.
Gamergate technically originated as journalistic ethics, but to claim that what happened there was related to journalistic ethics would in my opinion be grossly misguided. I wouldn’t dare claim that it was anything other than a shameful example of grotesque sexism.
Not true Ciarán. They never defined ‘negative’. It could simply be criticism, say “you should’ve killed him!” or “how did you lose the flag?!”, and I wouldn’t call that harassment. That would degrade and diminish actual harassment that is far more extreme.
186 participants is so-so. It shows a correlation, sure. But it really isn’t enough to making sweeping generalisations about.
Gamergate was about ethics in game journalism, and if you don’t accept then you’re just ignoring the facts. The movement resulted in multiple gaming websites *changing their ethics policies*. How exactly does a movement that just harasses women online get those kind of major results? I think it’s shallow to ignore the improvements the movement has made to the gaming industry.
Gamergate started as ethics and resulted in a debate, but more importantly it lead to significant harassment and abuse, specifically of females in the industry and highlighted the severe levels of sexism prevalent in gaming.
To ignore that and claim it was about ethics only is just…. unethical. In my opinion it’s to ignore the bigger issue.
As for negative, the severity isn’t relevant so long as a difference was identified.
Gamergate was a setup and no threat was made , she did it all for publicity. That yoke will say anything for attention. Gave out about violent games yet in picture’s of her game collection has dozens of violent games. She’s a hypocrite a fraud, and a clown.
Kids who don’t get their own way throw a tantrum. Shocker.
hmmm, comments open on this story but not on the callely or HSE stories how strange. Dear journal.ie why no articles about TTIP and the consequences for Irish citizens.
the journal PLOS One has way too much time on its hands
Played WoW for years and never saw or heard of female players getting abuse. We had a large (200+) friendly active guild which made weekly events for all types of players and everyone got along. Saying that, we rarely accepted anyone under 16 years old and put all new members on a months probation to see how they meshed. I miss the community big time but blizzard just diluted the game to a point where playing was dull and getting more directed to children.
As a girl who played WoW for years, I can confirm! Never had any sexist remarks, was part of a large guild too, well mixed in sexes, nationalities and 16+ (I quit when I couldn’t bring myself to play Kung Fu Panda btw!).
But I do think fantasy RPG gaming has a very different base – they attract a different type of player. Sure, you get your a$$holes, but it’s not as much of a pissing contest as FPS games. The abuse I’ve heard while my hubby plays CoD is unreal, if it was me I wouldnt open my mouth either!
So if a player is doing badly, they are more likely to lash out at other players. This is the findings of this study? Am I reading this right?
Oh, wait, I’m getting it wrong. If a MALE player is doing badly, HE is more likely to lash out at FEMALE players. I wonder what the stats were on women who play badly lashing out? Oh, they didn’t bother with that did they. No, they wouldn’t fit the narrative. I suppose it is progressive in that sense that the word “misogyny”, “basement-dwelling neckbeard” or “worst than ISIS” aren’t mentioned in this article. And Halo 3, really?
Reign it in!
“A total of 189 players spoke, all of them male. That’s not to say that women did not play, just that they did not speak…”
So no data on female reactions IS their data. Read sh*t properly before you go off on one!!
I just took one look at the headline and thought ‘Irish male bashing article’.
I played sport my entire life and have got abused tons of times so I have a thick skin but I play FIFA and world of tanks and the abuse I get is unreal. I hammer 95% of people I play on FIFA, I actually stopped playing on consoles because of the abuse , as on the PC you can’t message or contact someone and it tends to be more mature with FIFA anyway.
The other night in world of tanks in a mode called clan wars, a match was ending in a draw and because we didn’t let them win we got told to die and how we were the off spring of rape, get cancer etc. Really sick shit.
You basically do not need a study to find out these people need a life. as if you interacted like that in real life you would be hospitalized.
Tone policing… … really? Very progressive.
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