LADS LADS LADS
We start by paying attention to what’s really going on - Lads Lads Lads came from conversations with young men about identity, pressure and expectation. From there, it developed into a project built on trust, honesty and shared experience.
Lads Lads Lads is a Hartlepool-based project that works with young men to explore what it means to be a “lad” today, reframing perceptions of masculinity through lived experience, conversation and creative practice.
Developed through interviews, workshops and public outcomes, the project aims to create space for reflection, build confidence and connection, and support more positive, open and healthy expressions of identity through creativity whilst providing our lads with positive, supportive role models.
The project has been built from the ground up, starting with conversations, working in spaces where young men already feel comfortable, from gyms and barbers to youth settings and informal social spaces. These conversations are developed into creative prompts, responses and material that form the basis of the project’s artistic outputs.
Artists are embedded within these spaces to build trust over time, using a mix of interview techniques, workshops and collaborative making to explore personal experiences and shared perspectives. This process allows participants to shape the direction of the work, ensuring that what is created feels honest, relevant and rooted in lived experience.
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The project works across multiple artforms, including sound, text and visual work.
This has included developing an interview-led sound approach, graffiti workshops and large-scale banner making, where participants contribute words, phrases and imagery that reflect their experiences and viewpoints. Alongside this, we are developing a short film with local performer TYYGRR and Reel Good Films, drawing on the voices, language and experiences gathered through the project to create a powerful, artist-led piece that brings these perspectives into a new public space. The film acts as both a creative outcome and a point of connection, amplifying local voices while challenging and reshaping dominant narratives around masculinity.
Lads Lads Lads has been tested through live contexts, including development and presentation as part of Wintertide, where early iterations of the work were shared publicly. These moments allow the project to be experienced, questioned and refined, ensuring that it continues to evolve in response to the people involved and the places it exists within.
The long-term ambition for the project is to develop a large-scale public-facing body of work, including a co-created publication designed as an artwork in its own right, alongside a wider campaign that shares the voices and perspectives of young men across the town.
At its core, Lads Lads Lads is about creating space for young men to be heard, to reflect and to imagine different versions of themselves and their futures, using creativity as a way to open up conversations that don’t always have a place elsewhere.