“The boy that we made is called ‘Joey’,” says 17-year-old Sean Brophy. He points out Joey in the gallery. Joey is tall and wearing a tracksuit and a hat.
“I think it was me and another fellah who gave him the tracksuit because at the time that was the trendy tracksuit everyone was wearing. Another lad gave him the cap which represents his style. The whole character is just our thoughts and some of our styles put into one.
” What were you asked to do? “We just we got asked to create a boy, an average young fellah from nowadays – what his life would be. How we think a young fellah’s life should be. You give him a name and a life.
” “It was fun,” says 15-year-old Reece Wosser. He was in a group that created “Decco”, whose avatar is holding a bike and wearing a Canada Goose body warmer. “We were asked questions and we all just had to give our own answers and our own opinions and [artist] Aaron [Sunderland Carey] would be there.
And then in the end, he put everything that we were saying together to make ‘Decco’ and it ended up just being the perfect description of what we were all trying to get at.” Boys in the Making was created in 2018 by artist Dr Fiona Whelan in collaboration with the Rialto Youth Project’s team leader Dannielle McKenna. The initiative has been repeated with other youth centres and schools in the city and they’re developing a methodology so it can spread wider still.
Nineteen “boys” have been created so far, explored i.
