The creative industries are looking pretty bleak right now. Arts degrees cost tens of thousands of pounds, with little to no guarantee that you’ll even get a job on the other side. Artists, designers, writers, and more are being replaced wholesale by AI, or being forced to cast aside their favourite parts of their jobs to “adapt” to the new climate. Budgets are shrinking, and yet workers are being asked to deliver more than ever before.
We’re not just saying this to depress you even further. Because while things are hard, there are some paths less travelled that offer a different approach to working in a creative field. Take, for example, a new open call from Selfridges and Dazed, inviting the next generation of cultural changemakers to have their voices heard and build their own creative universe in the heart of London.
The open call is aimed at young people spanning an array of creative disciplines: photographers, painters, fashion designers, stylists, hair stylists and make-up artists, graphic designers, set designers, sculptors, filmmakers and more. The purpose? To help pump some creative energy back into London. But what does that mean in practice? Well, the department store will hand over its spaces and platforms to showcase successful applicants’ cutting-edge creative work from March to June 2027.
“For 35 years, Dazed has championed the next generation of creative voices, the people pushing culture forward, challenging the norm and imagining what’s next,” says Dazed editor-in-chief Ted Stansfield. “This open call is a chance to discover some of the most exciting talent out there, giving selected artists a platform to reach new audiences and take their careers to the next level.”
For many years, the windows at Selfridges have served as an exhibition space for interesting and experimental creative projects – whether that’s clothes styled by emerging fashion talents, examples of trailblazing design, or straight up artworks. Even for established creatives, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: where but the middle of Oxford Street could you get your work seen by some 500,000 visitors per day?
“Selfridges’ Oxford Street windows are among the most famous visual spaces on Earth,” says Will Wyness, creative director at Selfridges. “A show across these windows will arguably be seen by more people than an exhibition at every major gallery in London combined.” This open call from Selfridges and Dazed marks the first time that these legendary spaces will be handed over to young artists, “to build their own universes and depict what it truly means to be a young person today: raw, positive, uplifting and uncompromised”. Wyness adds: “We want to discover unfiltered new talent and give them the scale they deserve.”
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Getting your work into Selfridges’ windows will be no small feat, of course. From October 16 to October 23, artists aged 18 to 35 can nominate themselves by sharing a link to their work here alongside a statement on what inspires them, what an opportunity like this would mean to them and what project they might bring to life inside a Selfridges window.
After submissions close, a shortlist of selected artists will be awarded a paid pitch fee of £1,000 to present their ideas to a jury of influential industry talents and members of the Selfridges team and Dazed team.
Finally, the six artists will each take over six of the Selfridges Oxford Street windows for three months, beginning Thursday 25th March 2027, with a healthy production budget plus a creative fee of £3,000 for their time. It doesn’t stop there, either. As if central London’s millions of visitors weren’t enough, the winning creatives’ stories and work will also be broadcast to a global audience via Dazed channels.
What are you waiting for? Entries close at midnight on October 23. The full submission process and T&Cs are available here!