Guest Blog | Graham Storer, Norton Men’s Shed

06 November 2025 — jessica-bailey

We spoke with Graham Storer, Founder of Norton Men’s Shed in Norton-on-Tees, County Durham. He shared the story behind the Men’s Shed movement and explained how these valuable community spaces bring men together, offering a welcoming place for those seeking companionship and conversation while keeping their hands and minds active through shared projects.

Of Cancer, Men and Sheds

“You would not be reading this blog unless you or someone known to you were not impacted in some way by one of more of over 100 diseases affecting tissue, bone or blood.

The most common are breast, lung, prostate, colorectal and blood cancers. One in four of us will develop cancer during our lifetime. In one way or another it affects everyone because it impacts close family and friends too.

Cancers have one thing in common which is they develop when normal cells mutate into cancerous cells which multiply and spread. Our genes control cells, instructing when to start and stop growing. Normal cells follow instructions but rebellious cancer cells don’t, going rogue to attack from within.

We should be encouraged that fewer people die of cancer now than 20 years ago. The prognosis is good in many cancers and if cure is not possible they can be well managed with treatments. Key to matters is early detection.

Nevertheless, a diagnosis is a “shocking” experience for a person, a family, friends and work mates. Many expectations can be thrown into turmoil, along with our minds. Cancer is a subject that many find difficult to discuss. Friends often don’t know how to react to the news. How should they?

How welcome is an openness about cancer resulting from pink park runs by women and Movember moustaches raising awareness of men’s health concerns including cancer.

We now turn to the second main word in the title, men!

Men are from Mars

Men and women have much in common, but there are differences. Women relate far easier than men. Arguably, they get more practice because they share life experiences unique to them, such as childbirth. It’s a great unknown the first time and it’s a natural to get the inside story from other mothers. Men get excited about other things like football and gadgets.

Whatever the reasons for the differences, men in the main do not open up to each other as women do. They adopt a macho attitude that big boys don’t cry. Well they do, but they often do so on the inside. They bottle matters up and often mask up to the outside world, including friends and family. The extreme consequence can be thoughts of suicide, attempts to do so and the tragic final event. Male suicides are 3 times the number of female. The highest rate of male suicide is the 50 – 54 age band.

The causes of suicidal often relate to life events such as bereavement, loss of job and position, relationship breakdown and decline in mental and physical health. Valleys of despair.

How do people get through such experiences? Many and various ways unique to the individual but an important factor is to avoid becoming isolated to stay in touch with others. Meeting with others in safe places and safe ways. Beginning a reset of life and rebuilding self-esteem and self-confidence.

It’s said that time is a great healer. Indeed it is, but healing takes time and needs coping tools. This takes us to the subject of Sheds – the third main word in the title.

Sheds, Men’s Sheds

What? There are 1200+ in the UK and growing. Men’s Sheds are community spaces – typically workshops, with tools and equipment, with chat space and tea pot. They bring men together for them to recreate the atmosphere of a workplace, without forced labour! Places to be with others who are missing mate-ship and banter. Being distracted by doing something with a touch of “The Last of the Summer Wine”.

Norton Men’s Shed (Norton-on-Tees that is) was founded in January 2022 in a cold cricket pavilion. The only distraction offered to 6 or 7 people was to decorate the changing rooms as payment in kind for shelter. It was fun and all involved were strangers with a need to reconnect with community.

The Shed was the result of a “Shed bereavement” by a Shedder (me) from 4 Sheds previously established in Whitby district since 2016. A NHS Social Prescribing Link Worker in Norton heard a rumour that a Shed was being considered. She needed something as an activity to offer isolated, at risk, difficult men! Thus our intent met with her need and Norton Shed launched within one month! Who did the work to realise it and make it? Those who came as beneficiaries were most often introduced through a social prescriber.

Now, 4 years on, at the sports complex, where the cricket pavilion is, there is a 5 morning a week Shed with facilities for woodworking, 3D printing and laser cutting, a model railway, digital tech and socialising. The Shed is a family that cares about each other, because we are all in a similar boat.

That boat includes cancer. A year ago a Thursday “Cancer Portal” opened at Norton Shed supported by local NHS Link Workers and cancer charities, notably including Macmillan Cancer Support (North East),

The portal is a low-threshold entry to the Shed for men with a cancer diagnosis or who are carers for a person. It is an opportunity for chat, banter, distractive doing and simply helping the Shed.

Norton Men’s Shed’s strapline is “Doing, Being, Belonging and Becoming”. The final word is important because all Shedders, once settled in, are encouraged to look to the future. Recover, discover and then progress as part of a joint (ad)venture with others.

“Cancer” Shedders are not restricted to the Thursday session. They can and do come another day (or two) in the week if it suits. This is possible because we do not “deal” with cancer. We work together with the social implications and consequences of it. It is the same for other conditions impacting the lives of men who don’t have a cancer diagnosis. We depend on professionals for the delivery of healthcare to Shedders – our role is rehabilitation.

Bringing together the threads of Cancer, Men and Men’s Sheds

Enough about Norton! What about other parts of our country? Cancer and men are much the same anywhere. Maybe what has been written strikes a chord for you. How can you discover Sheds in your neck of the woods?

UK Men’s Sheds Association (UKMSA) has an online Shed map. You can ask a local Social Prescribing Link Worker in your area, look on your council’s database or as a last resort email nortonmensshed@gmail.com with your contact details and a message.

Sheds are not factory made – not our type at least. Each is run independently by those who come, so called Shedders, to the best of their combined circumstances and abilities. So different Sheds have different characters and not all will have a “cancer portal” but they should be welcoming. Joining will be by agreement because, for instance, of safe operating. Sheds are not statutory services.

Norton Shed wants to see more Sheds and is offering help to start-ups in new Teesside localities.”

You can read more about Norton Men’s Shed on their website www.normens.org.uk. To find a Men’s Shed in your area, or other cancer support services, please search on Cancer Care Map’s homepage using your postcode.