A shopper on Manchester’s Market Street may seemingly have little in common with someone dancing at the Derby Brewery Arms at 3am. This September, however, a window at schuh brought those worlds together, offering passers-by a glimpse of the city’s rave and fashion scenes. Local DJ and photographer Olivia Joseph, also known as Girlfriend, curated the window using nostalgic music memorabilia; peep the CD chandelier and spray-painted-chrome-everything.
The installation is the sixth edition of schuh’s Community Window project. Created with Gone Norf, an independent collective founded in 2025 by Rosie Callaghan, George Groucott and Tad Dzimwasha to champion working-class and Northern creatives, it also forms part of the retailer’s involvement in Fashion Britain, a British Fashion Council initiative intended to bring more fashion opportunities beyond London.
Apart from stocking some of the coolest shoes around (think DMs and ASICS) on high streets across the UK, schuh makes room for the communities shaping the culture its customers are part of. “schuh believes in giving young people a space to be unapologetically themselves, and this window celebrates exactly that,” says Stephanie O’Reilly, the retailer’s Head of Community. “By bringing together music and fashion, Gone Norf and Girlfriend create spaces where young people feel empowered to express themselves, fostering a sense of belonging and community.”
For Rosie, Manchester’s creative community feels “really interconnected, grassroots and collaborative. There’s so much talent across music, fashion, photography, art and events, and I think one of the sickest things about the city is how much people champion each other.” She found her place in it by starting Gone Norf with friends. “We wanted to create something that reflected the talent we were seeing around us and, more importantly, create opportunities for people who might not always feel like there’s a place for them within the traditional creative industry. A lot of Gone Norf has grown organically through friends, collaborators and people we’ve met at gigs, parties, exhibitions and other grassroots spaces. It’s really become a community as much as a creative platform.”
Olivia has found the scene similarly welcoming. “Manchester may be a big city, but the creative scene feels within reach of itself. It isn’t a pool of endless creatives fighting for the same opportunities the way London can sometimes feel. In fact, there aren’t as many big opportunities as there should be. Leading us to invent, collaborate and grow our own: born from passion, rather than competition.”
Rosie hopes the window shows pedestrians how thoroughly music and fashion are entwined in Manchester. “There’s a real DIY spirit here, nowhere in this country is more DIY than Manchester – that mindset is the bread and butter of the city. People aren’t waiting for permission or an in, they’re putting on their own nights, starting collectives, taking photographs, making clothes and building their own creative communities.” Olivia also hopes it reaches people who might actually never encounter that scene otherwise. “The typical Market Street customer may not also be the same punter I see out and about at DBA at 3am on a Saturday night. I hope this display has provided a window to unfamiliar minds for promoting queer joy and acceptance.” She also wants to uplift the female and non-binary DJs and dancers featured in the display.
But what happens after the installation comes down? “For me, meaningful support is about creating sustained opportunities rather than one-off moments,” Rosie says. “That could look like more paid opportunities, access to spaces, mentorship, funding, collaborations and platforms for young people to actually develop their work. It’s also about trusting local creatives to shape the culture of their own city rather than bringing everything in from elsewhere.” “You shouldn’t have to move to London to have your work taken seriously,” she adds. The talent, she stresses, extends across the rest of the North too.
“Things like affordable studio spaces, creative workshops and programmes are all great, but I believe it is important to fund these types of entities inside schools first. Whether children plan to be creative later in life or not, it provides an opportunity for kids to express themselves in a healthy way to build their character and self identity,” Olivia adds. A Child of the North report found that 93% of children are being excluded from arts and cultural education because of funding shortages in state schools. “Who is going to be on our stages, designing our clothes, or acting in the programmes and films we watch in 20 years’ time?” she asks. “The future is only bright if we water our grass now.”
The window is open to view at schuh, 31 Market Street, throughout September. The community it portrays will still be making things when the display is gone, but whether it can keep doing so depends on people investing in the talent already there. Want to see Girlfriend behind the decks? Olivia will be playing at Runway’s six-hour Halloween event at Honey St Studio in Manchester. Follow @gonenorf to keep up with the collective’s upcoming events, too.
