Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Summer in November fun day to celebrate dads
The ‘Celebrating Dads’ event is taking place as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)’s nationwide Festival of Social Science and will be a chance for families to find out more about the research taking place at Leeds Beckett’s School of Social Sciences into men, fathers and families.
Taking place from 10am to 4pm in room G02 of the University’s Broadcasting Place building on Woodhouse Lane, three projects will be showcased: Dr Esmée Hanna’s Supporting Young Dads work, which explored the ‘on the ground’ reality of young dads groups and their value for young men; work led by Professor Steve Robertson into the Salford Dadz network to support and provide a safe space for fathers in an area of Salford; and Adam Lowe’s PhD research into the successful use of emotional expressiveness in coping and wellbeing for heterosexual men.
Alongside the research showcase will be a ‘postcards to a parent’ project, where family members can write messages of advice that they would like to pass on to new parents. The postcards will then be swapped with a partner event taking place in Sunderland, ‘Mum’s the Word’, celebrating lesbian motherhood.
Children will be encouraged to create portraits of their dads, depicting what they think being a dad is; and they can also join in a range of fun arts and crafts activities, including painting and making collages.
Dr Esmée Hanna (pictured above), a researcher in the Centre for Men’s Health at Leeds Beckett, explained: “One of the things that we know from our research is that dads feel they don’t have enough opportunity for taking holidays. So we decided that a summer holiday in November theme would be ideal for our event. We will have deck chairs for dads to relax on and games to play as families, such as indoor bowling and crazy golf.
“Our research is all about getting dads to socialise with each other in positive ways and we are very keen to welcome people into the university and start conversations about our findings.”
Leeds Libraries will be coming along with Lego from their Lego Club – a free event held across the city’s libraries to encourage play between parents and children and attract children into the library.
As well as having the chance to meet Leeds Beckett researchers, several young dads groups will also be in attendance to share information about their initiatives, including: the Health for All young dads project based primarily in the LS10 and LS11 Leeds postal codes; the Young Dads Collective North; and Leeds Dads, which is part of NCT Leeds.
You can tweet about the event, along with the Sunderland partner event, using the hashtag #ESRCmumsanddads.
The 14th annual Festival of Social Science takes place from 5-12 November 2016 with more than 250 free events nationwide. Run by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Festival provides an opportunity for anyone to meet with some of the country’s leading social scientists and discover, discuss and debate the role that research plays in everyday life. With a whole range of creative and engaging events there’s something for everyone including businesses, charities, schools and government agencies. A full programme is available via the ESRC. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using #esrcfestival.