The Shed has given me purpose again, after working life finished. I missed the work friends and the atmosphere. I had to work from home during the Covid lockdowns and I found lone working difficult because I missed the contact with others in my workplace.
This is the kind of thing that men say about the Shed. It fills a big gap in life for which many have not prepared for many reasons. Lucky the man who can taper working hours over a period, enabling the sense of self-worth and role to continue but allowing time to find other interests and activities to fill the time gap. Volunteering might be one. Giving back to the community. That is one of the things the Shed provides.
A significant number of Shedders do not gently ease from work to non-work. It can be very abrupt. Illness and bereavement are two such cliff falls. Fortunately, they know what work is and the teamwork that comes with most jobs, and that carries them forward in the Shed. A doing place, a mates place, a learning place and a mentoring place.
What about men who have not worked for many years. Possibly income limited. Without external stimulus (that a Shed gives) they can settle into a regime of being a couch potato. Maybe (in fact probably) they wanted working life to have continued, but sadly the opportunity was denied.
Most Shedders are 65+. They have lived experience. What about young people who cannot get a foot on a rung of the work ladder? No lived experience of work and teamwork. They are the NEETS – Not in Employment, Education or Training. 
Alan Milburn, the ex minister, was commissioned to write a report, the preliminary fact findings of which have just been published.
“The number of young people neither working nor learning has jumped beyond one million for the first time since 2013, Office of National Statistics figures reveal ahead of a review which will warn over fears of a “lost generation”.
The Office for National Statistics said the number of people aged between 16 and 24 and not in employment, education or training – so-called NEETs – has risen to 1.01 million.”
This diagram covers NEETS in rural areas. Whitby is that and the other coastal resorts . Inland too. https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/neets/intervention-approaches/rural-neetsneets-living-remote-areas-bridging-geographic
It is not just training for how to do a job that they need, but how to relate to others in a job – management, workmates and customers. There are undoubted benefits from Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the medical field for instance but the potential for jobs as we know them to be lost is grave. Natural human intelligence outshone by artificial intelligence. Redundant, bored, purposeless, controlled by circumstance (rather like slavery!).
Doing something for NEETs, creating jobs and roles with satisfying purpose is the challenge. The global workplace we are in complicates.
What can the Shed movement contribute? Maybe what needs to evolve (and they have done this in China where they actually have similar problems to us) in a younger persons equivalent. In Norton Shed and many Sheds we have taken on digital enable design and manufacturing. We have a manufacturing plant in our trailer which equipment could be taken to a care home!
Why not Sheds for technology evolution where individuals can learn and contribute to a pseudo enterprise? Places where young people can gain experience of what s involved in working together?
On the radio there have been comments from business leaders that often young people are not ready for the first step on a work ladder. It is said that schools might do more. Well, these are issues beyond our pay grade.
WorkEx
Graham was reminded of something he attempted in Whitby in 2014, two years BS (Before Sheds). It was about providing on a voluntary basis a week’s work experience for 15 year olds. There were two key facts – 1) that Graham’s sons greatly benefited from one (sometimes two) weeks of work experience in an organisation, and 2) in Whitby the opportunities were more limited than where Graham’s family grew up in the South.
An idea came to Graham arising from his son and family making a fibreglass canoe in a turkey factory in a week. With four other groups doing the same. There was a cost but then there was a canoe to use. All supervised by two enthusiasts. There was a huge sense of achievement.
So why not have such a thing happening in Whitby, but for kids working together? A simulated work experience with H&S, time management, planning and disciplined working all part of it. Why not other choices of challenge involving catering and event management or the design and building of a house extension, with local retired tradesmen supervising. Intergeneratio
Below is a PowerPoint describing the possibilities. From the 2014 era!
But before you look, it failed. Well, the touch paper was not even lit 🙂 Graham worked with two others on this and the first step was to take it to a school for comment. What we did not realise is that in around 2012, the Coalition Government had made work experience non-statutory. It wasn’t banned, but it was optional. Schools have always been under financial pressure and it is the non-statutory that takes the hit when savings have to be made. Schools could still do it, but they would have to find the resource.
Maybe the time has come to consider whether young people should again get a first taste of work in a real workplace and for some it could take the form of simulated non-workplace work experience WorkEx.
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