Involvement · Director · 2021 to Present
Mandem Meetup
A free grassroots community supporting men’s mental health, running in Manchester and Wolverhampton.
What it is
Mandem Meetup is a free grassroots community supporting men’s mental health, running in Manchester and Wolverhampton. Jamie Dennis started it after experiencing what it felt like to be properly heard for the first time. It began around a kitchen table and has grown into something supporting over a thousand men a year.
It is deliberately not therapy. Nobody there is claiming to fix anyone. The whole thing rests on a simpler idea: that most men do not need an intervention, they need somewhere to be honest without it becoming a thing.
What they do
Everything is free to attend. Football, hiking, foraging, workouts, music and chess sit alongside the WhatsApp communities that keep it running between meetups. The activity is mostly a pretext. It is easier to say something real while you are walking or kicking a ball than sitting in a circle being asked how you feel.
Underneath that sits work most people never see. Safeguarding, a referral route for people who need more than a meetup can give, a quiet space for when the noise gets too much, and accessibility choices so the site works for whoever turns up to it. That infrastructure is what separates a community from a group chat.
What I did
Mandem Meetup is a grassroots charity running free, peer-led spaces where men can talk without judgement or expectation. I helped build its brand and identity, and I also act as a director.
I got there through a mutual friend of mine and Jamie's (CEO), and I stayed for reasons that have very little to do with design. My uncle took his own life when I was eight. Men are famously bad at asking for help and I am no exception.
The work I do for them is the same work I do everywhere: helping an organisation explain itself clearly to the people it serves, to partners and to funders. It just happens to matter more here.
