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Many Good Men: A New Chapter in Scotland’s Fight Against Misogyny

Civic Digits and the Educational Institute of Scotland have unveiled the Many Good Men Education Pack—a resource that feels less like a teaching aid and more like a necessary intervention. In a landscape where misogyny and gender‑based violence continue to shape the lives of young people, this pack arrives with the quiet insistence of something that refuses to be ignored.

Aimed at upper‑secondary and FE learners, the material draws its strength from the participatory theatre project that inspired it. Two groups of young people were invited not merely to comment on misogyny, mental health and masculinity, but to build stories from the inside out. Fictional characters become the conduit for real conversations, allowing students to explore difficult terrain without the pressure of self‑exposure. It’s a clever bit of dramaturgy: by stepping into someone else’s shoes, learners are given the space to examine their own.

The launch event at Codebase brings together educators, creatives, policymakers and—crucially—the young people whose voices shaped the work. Their short documentary, charting the creative process, offers a glimpse into how art‑making becomes a rehearsal room for social change. It’s not polished PR fluff; it’s testimony. A reminder that when young people are trusted with complexity, they rise to meet it. The documentary does the job in opening doors, rather than providing strict answers: a crucial entryway for a teaching tool, rather than an entertainment medium.

The education pack itself provides scripted stories from Many Good Men alongside structured tools that encourage learners to intervene, redirect and reimagine the characters’ trajectories. It’s forum theatre translated into the classroom: a chance to practise resistance, to test out what accountability might look like, to understand how misogyny embeds itself in the everyday and how it might be unpicked.

At the heart of this sits the original participatory theatre project. Staged in football clubs, it follows a young player pulled into online radicalisation. Audiences are invited to step into the action—digitally and physically—to alter the outcome. It’s a potent setup, one that refuses to treat harmful attitudes as inevitable or immutable. Instead, it asks communities to recognise their role in shaping the men and boys in their midst.

For those who missed the staging of this powerful, necessary piece, there’s a fresh opportunity for students, and the wider public to catch Clare Duffy’s Many Good Men: in it’s new home in Dunfermline High School (additional details and dates to follow). Civic Digits’ ambition is to take Many Good Men across Scotland, working with young people to author their own versions and perform them for their own communities. It’s a model that understands theatre not as a product but as a process: a space where parents, carers, teachers and youth workers can listen rather than lecture, and where young people can articulate the pressures of a digital world designed to monetise their vulnerabilities.

Supported by a broad coalition—from Creative Scotland to Heart of Midlothian FC, from Zero Tolerance to YouthLink Scotland—the project signals a collective willingness to confront misogyny not with slogans but with sustained, imaginative labour. In a moment where harmful narratives spread faster than ever, Many Good Men offers something rare: a chance to slow down, to question, to rewrite. Not a cure‑all, but a start. And perhaps that’s the point.

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