The group combatting female loneliness in Liverpool

“Remember, carnations aren’t an 80s funeral flower anymore,” Sarah of Olive Owl Flowers tells the room full of women, showing us how to gently peel back the bloom in her hands. She uses her fingers to press out the petals into a bigger, rounder, more beautiful shape. We ooh and ahh. “It’s so important, isn’t it, to make time for yourself in this crazy world we live in," Sarah says. "Right, now who’s heard of the Fibonacci sequence?” 

I’m upstairs at the light and airy Pocket Cafe Bar, a stone’s throw from the Liverpool One bus station, and I’m learning how to arrange a perfectly-imperfect flower bouquet alongside dozens of strangers, most of whom have just met for the first time. I’ve lucked out – Stephanie Barney, one of the co-founders of Girls on the Go, the organisation putting on tonight’s event, managed to sneak me in, even though (like so many of GOTG’s extremely popular gatherings) this one had sold out days before. The whole room smells pleasantly floral and earthy, having been temporarily transformed into a little garden oasis, the dozen or so tables in the room piled high with flora and foliage. When Sarah’s finished her presentation, happy chatter fills the space as we get to creating. 

About an hour earlier, I’d been sitting on my settee, dreading the prospect of leaving the house. It had been an incredibly busy week at work; I was cranky and exhausted. But one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2025 was to put myself out there more: to go to more hangouts around the city – both professionally, to bulk up my sources for news stories, and personally, to meet new people and (one can hope!) make new friends. I moved to Liverpool almost two years ago, but now that I’m in my 30s, I’ve found myself less inclined to go out on the town for late-night adventures; I tend to prefer the comforts of home with my wife and our dog. Forging new relationships in adulthood is an increasingly daunting prospect. (Which is why I recently joined Liverpool’s wonderful roller derby league.)

Luckily, I’d committed to covering the Girls on the Go event in a professional capacity, so I couldn’t flake as easily as I might have if it was just a personal obligation. So I dragged myself onto the 86C bus and headed into town. 

The organisers have placed women who came with a friend at their own designated tables, while I’m at one for solo attendees. Ages at my table range from 19 to 35; one of us is from the Isle of Man, another (me) from the US, a third from Poland, and the rest from around the UK. At the last GOTG event I’d attended, my neighbours included an Italian and a Romanian. This time, two of the women at my table just moved to Liverpool a literal week before, and the rest of us applaud them for being so quick to throw themselves into city goings-on. One had left London and a long-term relationship, having met her now-ex boyfriend soon after arriving in the capital; her relationship had been the nucleus of her social life, so when they broke up, so did her sense of community. “Now I’m prioritising female friendships,” she says – she's already signed up for another two GOTG events next week. 

She’s right to get her name down early, given how GOTG’s popularity has exploded in the last two years. What began as a casual women’s running group in Liverpool in 2023 has blossomed (excuse the floral pun) into a thriving women’s wellness club and events company that’s already expanded to Manchester and Birmingham, with more cities in their sights. 

“My friend Caitlin [Lewing] and I were trying to fundraise for Refugee Women Connect,” 23-year-old CEO and co-founder Steph Barney tells me, when I manage to corral her for a chat about the organisation’s origin story. She’s sporting brand new (and very cute) GOTG merch, including a black hoodie with bright pink lettering. “And we were like, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to do a running club? And we didn't see any ones for women, or beginner friendly ones. Literally within 20 minutes we were like, what’s a girl’s group running name? And then I called my boyfriend, Martin, and he was like, ‘Okay, I'll design your logo’. And then in like an hour we’d made an Instagram. It was never supposed to grow into what it is now.” 

Steph was born in Geneva and raised in France; she moved to Liverpool five years ago for uni, like so many international students do, “but I really struggled to make friends because I didn't really connect with the culture,” she says. The French don't drink as much as Brits do, so messy, drunken pub nights weren’t really her scene. Despite Steph’s warm demeanour – and Liverpool’s reputation as one of the UK’s friendliest cities – she struggled to socialise. 

“I was around a lot of people that didn't really align with me, unfortunately,” she says, “and it was just really lonely.” But she did manage to make a couple lasting connections; she met both her 25-year-old boyfriend, Martin, who’s from Birmingham, and Caitlin, 22, from Nottingham, at the University of Liverpool. Initially, Steph and Caitlin started the girls’ running group with Martin’s help as an exercise about safety in numbers: they wanted to run but felt more secure, as young women, doing so with others. But they soon discovered a lot of attendees were also struggling to make friends. Some suggested GOTG start doing different kinds of events together. “So I was like, Okay, why not?” 

For Steph’s generation, the difficulty of building a social circle in a new city was exponentially compounded by Covid-19 lockdowns. “It was like, how do I even make friends? There wasn't like, ‘Oh, I could go to a coffee shop and meet new people’. You're stuck in your room. So I think it really slowed down a lot of people's social progress.” Those extended periods of physical isolation have had a demonstrable impact on young people’s mental health, but the pandemic isn’t solely to blame for widespread loneliness or the tendency so many of us have now to just stay home. 

A recent study conducted by Obsurvant on behalf of the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) found that young people in the UK are going out less and less. The majority of the 2,000 18-30 year-olds surveyed reported financial pressures as the main culprit. A third of respondents also pointed to their fear, anxiety, or uneasiness about going out at night – with women significantly more likely to have those concerns. 

Since Girls on the Go was founded as a running group to make women feel safer on the streets, it’s perhaps no surprise that athletic activities are front and centre: yoga, pilates and barre. But for those less inclined to get sweaty, there’s craft nights like plant pot painting or crochet workshops, as well as the biggest girls-only bingo nights in the UK.

The hardest part of her job, Steph tells me, is coming up with new ideas for events: “People do get bored quite easily.” The company is also learning to tailor activities to different cities’ preferences: Manchester is way more into fitness, for example, while Birmingham prefers workshops and events at coffee shops rather than bars. “The need for social groups is very very similar, though,” she adds. And here in Liverpool, the girls want it all: fitness, crafts, singalong movies — anything and everything. 

Did Steph ever expect Girls on the Go to become her full time gig? She laughs. “Not at all.” Her degree is in biomedical sciences; Caitlin, meanwhile, studied law, and Martin business and criminology. But as demand for their events only continued to grow, the opportunity to keep doing something they loved — helping women in Liverpool come together, to feel safer and less lonely — became too good an opportunity to pass up. 

At both the Girls on the Go events I attended, it was the older women (myself included) who seemed to take the reins on asking everyone else questions and keeping conversation flowing; the younger ones were much shyer, more cautious. But the longer we talked — “Let’s tell each other all our darkest secrets,” one of my fellow thirty-somethings joked —the more everyone around the table opened up. 

One of Girls on the Go’s biggest priorities is “making sure that it's affordable,” Steph says. The average ticket price for their events is around eight pounds. “We want to be sure to be accessible – otherwise, what's the point?” 

After a long day of staring into the void on my computer, it feels so good to get together with women from so many different backgrounds and walks of life to do something creative and calming with my hands. It feels right. 

A few days before Steph and I met up for the first time, Girls on the Go had posted an Instagram carousel reminding their nearly 70k followers that “transphobia and anti-trans comments are NOT welcome at Girls on the Go. If you don’t agree that trans women should be allowed in women-only spaces, we are not the community for you.” The first slide of the post reads: “We need to stop using ‘women’s safety’ as an excuse to push anti-trans agendas.” The organisers had been inspired to make their stance on trans inclusion known after a recent controversy over a girls gym in London with a “biological women only” policy, which had stirred up a bunch of anti-trans chaos on social media. Increasingly, these are exhausting questions that those administering spaces for women are forced to confront. I tell Steph that I appreciate Girls on the Go for making clear it’s a safe space for queer women, and for all women. 

“It’s our opinion that if you identify as a woman, you belong,” she tells me simply. “And you don’t have to be girly to come! I’m not very girly.” Clearly, none of the dozens of women who attended both the events I was at had been put off by the organisation’s strong and clear pro-trans stance. 

When my table finishes with our flower arrangements, we admire how differently they’ve all turned out:  one tightly and intimately packed, like a bridal bouquet; another loose and free and wild, like the perfect slice of an overgrown garden; the rest falling somewhere in between. We decide, thrillingly, to go for a nightcap at the Bridewell across the street to keep the party going, marching into the pub like a bizarro bridal party. We’re laughing and taking the piss like we’ve known each other forever. It all feels so simple, so natural. Could making friends really be this simple? 

The six of us are now cloistered in a group chat on Instagram, planning our next get together, wishing each other luck on upcoming dates and job interviews. It remains to be seen which of these budding friendships could become something longer-term  – but what Girls on the Go facilitates is the chance to find out.