Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Elikem Tamaklo from Pure Creative Arts

Elikem Tamaklo

Boys are more likely to be excluded from school, commit suicide and be identified as having a behavioural, emotional and social difficulty and get into trouble with the police. A new course aiming to address this masculinity crisis has now been launched by Pure Creative Arts. Courageous aims to see boys driven by integrity, dignity and purity; secure in their unique identity and released into their full potential.

Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Elikem Tamaklo, who has developed the course to find out more.

Jon: In August 2011 thousands of mainly young men rioted across London and other cities in England. At the time there was a lot of discussion about broken families, or perhaps fatherlessness being a root cause to what happened. In writing this course, what was it that was speaking to you in terms of where you feel young men are at today in this nation?

Elikem: That's a great observation. I guess the riots emphasise this disparity between young men and the realities of what they're going through in this day and age. When I look at different communities, I see young men who are struggling with their views on masculinity. What you see around society is a narrow view of what it means to be a man. The typical view is that a man is strong and doesn't show emotion. Growing up I was told that boys don't cry and you had to act macho to be seen as a strong man. I think this narrow view of masculinity has dominated and so around us, I think what we saw were extremes of this view and it does affect not just boys, but all those around them. The issue of fatherlessness is a big issue in the UK. You see lots of men who are growing up and they've adopted a certain view of the idea of being a man, so they go around acting like the lad and moving from one woman to the next, or sometimes shirking their responsibilities because they're going for their work and I think that needs to be addressed.

Jon: Do you think an absence of fathers is the primary cause behind what might be described as a masculinity crisis?

Elikem: I think it's the absence of good role models and different role models because the reality is that what it means to be a man is actually going to be a very individual thing because every man is different. But there are certain principles and certain qualities that we respect in strong men. I think that's what is lacking: the absence of good, strong models of masculinity. I think fathers have always been the demonstrable type of man, so for any young person growing up it would've been the man in their community. The problem is that in lots of different communities there aren't many fathers who are around. I think that masculinity crisis is to do with the lack of good role models and I think that's why we responded to this by starting a course not just to address the issue of what it means to be a man, but also to provide good models; that it is all right for men to show emotion in the right context, for example.

Jon: We've mentioned the riots as a symptom of underlying issues, but what are the other symptoms or effects that you see on a younger generation of males?

Elikem: That's a good question because in contrast to the riots, I think passivity is probably another symptom and I'll demonstrate this in a story. Boys are told that they can't really show emotion when they grow up and what that results in is that young men normally suppress the emotion and it leads to one of a few things. One is frustration: some young men let this out through aggressive behaviour. But then others, because of the squashed emotion, tend to react passively. I saw one young man who didn't want to attempt something new because he was afraid of failing, afraid of not achieving and afraid of being seen as a failure - and because of that he didn't even attempt to try something new. I think you see this in a lot of different contexts: lots of men don't even attempt to try and that's mainly because of deep suppressed emotions and I think that's a symptom of this masculinity dilemma.

Jon: As part of Pure Creative Arts, you've written this course called 'Courageous'. First of all, why the title 'Courageous'?

Elikem: Because it takes a courageous man to take the issue by the hand, address it and deal with it. I think that's what we want to equip young boys and young men with: the tools to see whatever issue is going on in their lives, whatever problems they might be facing and to look at it and know that they can deal with it: that they can do something about any situation that's in their life. Being courageous means overcoming the fear that is normally associated with these big issues. We want to inspire young men to be courageous; to know that they can overcome any situation that they find themselves in and they can make the right choices.

Jon: Can you tell us some of the topics that are covered in the course?

Elikem: We start off with the view of 'What is a man?' and we go through different stereotypes of masculinity. I think just asking that question is the first step because a lot of boys go through life without even thinking: What kind of man do I want to become? Where am I getting my views of masculinity from? From the media? From society? So we ask this question through lots of interactive presentations and looking at different stereotypes of masculinity. Then once we've moved from that view of masculinity, we start to look at how it affects relationships with women. Obviously in Pure we address other issues such as self-harm and disordered eating and a lot of times masculinity affects families and affects women. So we look at that relationship and then also relationships with authority and, like you mentioned with the riots, there is definitely an effect on how young men view authority. So we try and bring out these issues and then finally we end with how we overcome and how we resolve our emotions and our anger.

Jon: It's a 10-week course. Have you taken any young men through this course yet?

Elikem: Yes we have. We've had an amazing pilot. We've had two pilots in schools in Liverpool and each course has eight boys in it, so we've had 16 boys go through the programme. With each boy it's a life; I think we've always seen it as we have the opportunity to impact one life at a time. We do group sessions and we do one-on-one sessions within those ten weeks. With the one-on-one sessions, what we find is that we have the opportunity to open up these issues in a more personable manner and towards the end, I think what inspires me is seeing the lights in these young boys' eyes as they begin to start to believe that they can accomplish something, that they can amount to something. I think that for me is what drives me to see this roll out even more, because these are 16 lives that have been positively impacted.