There are shops here that I remember being empty when I was 7 or 8, it felt a bit downtrodden but full of independents. Further back it was quite a fancy street, beautiful shops.
I’m connected to a lot of places, but feel like you can belong to a place and make a difference. It is an easy place to set up, but there’s a reason for Holly and I to be here.
Some of it is just stopped in time, but some things are appearing again, it’s a good time to be here but it’s not all good.
You can’t just turn something around overnight, you shouldn’t try. It’s dangerous to move too fast. It makes the change kind of inorganic. We definitely can’t do it alone. We can’t stand out for the wrong reasons, we don’t wanna make it just our show, it’s got to be cohesive.
Big bookshops are always going to do big bookshop things – we won’t fight them but we will provide something else, a counter narrative, what we really like and hope you really like too
For ages Stockport has played second fiddle to Manchester. It has a chip on its shoulder but also has potential. It’s both big and small, it’s up and down. It’s strange because you can feel very cut off just by a rise of 5 or 6 metres. Topographically Stockport is really bizarre.
The Underbanks needs a mass of people, to pull together. It’s dangerously small currently, there aren’t enough people, businesses, to sustain it, yet …
Holly and I don’t see this as a springboard, we want to be the change here.
