Seven Sisters Market

Description

Akin to a small town centre of the South American continent, Seven Sisters Market deploys a scenario of successive superimpositions of Antioquia-style architectural elements concealed in the interior of a former Edwardian department store and its adjacent terraced houses. Still today, an amalgam of multi-coloured furniture, regional decorations, goods spilled over the halls and varied construction materials, continues to shape a neverfinishing setting where several family generations keep crafting their shops in the midst of an active commercial activity. For twenty-eight years, SSM has provided a launching platform for small businesses. Seven Sisters Market has been earmarked for redevelopment for over seven years, holding shopkeepers and employees in uncertain circumstances and hindering their chances to invest and thrive. In response, the traders in coalition with several neighbourhood associations and residents have carried out a long-range campaign to block the development project for Wards Corner building posed by Grainger Plc, a real-estate developer, and backed by Haringey Council through its regeneration plan for Tottenham. Over almost eight years, this effort of endurance and future projecting in common has strengthened a series of networks of sharing and mutual support among the shopkeepers and the other people involved. These actions have influenced the management and way of governance of the market itself (Text by researcher Isabel Gutierrez Sanchez)