Beyond gentrification, Latin American market tales

Market Tales is a cultural community engagement research project, that aims to preserve histories of migration, resistance, and collective organising that are central to the Latin American community in the UK. It looks at identity and collective community planning, through diverse creative workshops.

Funded through the British Academy research project Beyond Gentrification: Latin American Market Tales in London, with researcher Dr Veronica Posada Alvarez as principal investigator from the University of Derby. This project provides a timely response to narratives beyond gentrification and offers a guide for reparative urban practices that are mobilised across collaborations between stakeholders and beneficiaries. Centrally, it investigates narratives of the re-making of place, and relocation of the Latin American community in and around the Seven Sisters Market (North London), the reconstruction of a diasporic place of gathering and belonging, after decades of displacement threats, by urban developers and local authorities. This project works with creative and practice-based methodologies to conceptualise on diasporic territorial healing.

Additional support has been secured through the Early Career Research Fund at the University of Derby to expand the project’s consultation on the Community Plan through the activation of the Seven Sisters Market community space as an Urban Room.

Together, these linked strands directly support the aims, capacity, and long-term sustainability of the Seven Sisters Market community in North London by strengthening its role as custodian, advocate, and organiser of the Latin American community.

This project has been conducted in partnership with the Wards Corner Community Benefit Society, (CBS) founded in 2022, by a group of traders, campaigners, and grassroots organisations in Tottenham who have been involved with the community campaign to support and save the market since 2002. The CBS's aim is to implement the community plan co-developed with its beneficiaries through meaningful engagement.

A brief history of Latin Americans in the UK

Latin Americans have migrated to the UK in significant numbers since the 1970s, establishing community organisations throughout the 1980s and 1990s to support newcomers and advocate for their rights. As the population grew, areas such as Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters emerged as important cultural, social and economic hubs where Latin Americans could find community, employment and a sense of belonging. Today, London is home to one of Europe's largest Latin American populations, yet many continue to face discrimination, insecure employment and barriers linked to language, making these community spaces essential for collective wellbeing.

Since 2002, the Seven Sisters Market (widely known as Pueblito Paisa and Latin Village) has become one of the UK's most important Latin American market places. Home to traders from more than 20 nationalities, it has served as a vibrant centre of commerce, culture and social life. However, in 2007, redevelopment proposals for the Wards Corner site triggered a long campaign of community resistance. Traders established the Wards Corner Community Coalition, later becoming a Community Benefit Society (CBS), and developed an alternative community-led vision for the market. Their efforts gained international recognition in 2017 when the United Nations acknowledged the market's cultural significance and raised concerns about threats to the community's right to cultural life. Sadly in 2020 the market was shut down and stayed closed until 2025.

In October 2025, after years of negotiations with local council and TFL, a new temporary market reopens with diverse trading units and a community space.

Urban Rooms and Community Planning, The Wards Corner Urban Room

An Urban Room is a place where people come together to explore the past, present and future of their neighbourhood. First popularised by British architect and urban planner Sir Terry Farrell in The Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment (2014), Urban Rooms create opportunities for communities, organisations and local decision-makers to share knowledge, discuss local issues and shape the places where they live.

As part of this territorial healing initiative the project has launch the Wards Corner Urban Room. Located within the temporary Seven Sisters Market, it provides an open and welcoming environment where traders, residents, community organisations and visitors can contribute to the development of the Community Plan and help shape the market's future.

The Urban Room recognises that Seven Sisters Market is much more than a shopping destination. For more than two decades it has been a place of migration, culture, entrepreneurship and collective care, playing a vital role in the lives of the Latin American community and the wider neighbourhood. By creating opportunities for dialogue and participation, the Urban Room supports the market's continued role as a space of belonging, identity and cultural heritage.

By bringing people together to share experiences, develop ideas and make collective decisions, the Urban Room Drop-ins demonstrates how research can support community-led planning and contribute to more inclusive, equitable and sustainable urban futures. We have contributed with organisations such LAWA (Latin American Women’s Aid), LAWRS (Latin American Women’s Right Service), Abuelitas CIC, London Renter’s Union and United Voices of the World, to deliver services information to the wider community.

Creative Methodologies outputs designed at Derby

With the project team we designed diverse creative methodologies that lead us the following outputs.

Collage Workshops:

The collage workshops explored the historical importance of the Latin American community within Seven Sisters’ Market and the wider local area.

During the sessions, participants created a series of analogue collages while actively contributing to a body of evidence highlighting the market’s significance to the cultural diversity of the London Borough of Haringey.

Through this process, participants visually expressed and presented key themes they identified when reflecting on the Seven Sisters Market and its relationship to London’s Latin American communities.

Songwriting Workshops:

These workshops called for participants who were passionate about music and interested in creating narratives that tell the stories of Latin American communities in London, it was developed in a series of free songwriting workshops led by the singer María Mónica Gutiérrez AKA Montañera and producer Gregorio Merchán.

The workshops focused on collaboratively developing lyrics and melodies that reflected participants’ experiences in the market, and their Latin American cultural identities. By the end of the sessions, ideas had been refined and shaped into a cohesive piece, culminating in a finalised song that captured the collective voices and key themes explored throughout the process. Such as migration, Latin America, Community, Resistance and Urban Change.

The song was launch in June 2026, and it already has more than 1,000 reproductions.

Participants testimonies:

"By offering community spaces in a city where such spaces are limited, a new space at the service of the people can be considered an achievement and a territorial gain."

"What I liked most was the sense of community that was created. The space allowed (almost) ten people (all or almost all of them), who had been strangers, to become friends, chatty companions, allies, and to invent, through songs, a way of being a community.

I also liked visiting the market every week, seeing it through their eyes, discovering it each time as a new space and, at the same time, one that felt very familiar."

Community Filmmaking Workshops:

These workshops invite people who are interested in film and community storytelling to take part in a community-led filmmaking project rooted in the history, culture, and lived experiences of London’s Latin American community.

Led by Wondering CIC, the project explores territorial healing through storytelling, focusing on the history of Seven Sisters Market and its connections to Latin American culture, resilience, and collective memory.

Through a series of free, hands-on workshops, participants gain practical filmmaking experience while working with market traders and members of the Latin American community to create short films. Together, they developed stories that explored themes such as migration, identity, community, resistance, and urban change.

The film supports market traders and contributes to future community plans, public dissemination, and funding proposals.

Participants testimonies:

"I would like to mention that further relationships are built thanks to the existence of the market and this project in particular. For example, thanks to the songs workshop I am now producing a song for my upcoming short film Héctor. The lyrics were created during the workshop thanks to the conversations we held and it was written by Najwa. The song is being produced by Gregorio. I think the fact that’s happening is amazing. Also, during the Film workshop I met Owen, who is very visually skilled and is going to help my short film as a gaffer. Ultimately, being a director for Lo Que Permanece was a complete delight that allowed me to carry further questions I have had on my filmmaking."
Emerson, Colombian. Participant filmmaking and songwriting workshops.

Exhibition:

A Weekend Celebrating Latin American Community, Culture and Collective Action in London.

This weekend (June 26 –28) marked a vibrant celebration of Latin American culture and community across London, highlighting the growing visibility, resilience and contributions of Latin Americans throughout the city.

The weekend began on Friday with a screening of Lo Que Permanece as part of the Market Tales project, developed in collaboration with Wondering. The screening created a space for reflection on memory, identity and the importance of preserving community histories.

Throughout Saturday and Sunday, the celebrations continued at the Community Summer Fiesta at Seven Sisters Market, organised by Wards Corner Community Benefit Society (CBS) and led by María José Gonzales Zevallos. Coinciding with the excitement surrounding Bad Bunny's performances in London, the event brought together residents, artists, traders, organisations and visitors to celebrate the richness and diversity of London's Latin American communities.

A key feature of the weekend was the unveiling of a historical timeline tracing the history of Latin Americans in London. Developed collaboratively by Juan Pablo Angarita Bernal, María Venegas Rabá, Tatiana Vera and Juliana Ortiz and the Wards Corner CBS, the installation highlights decades of migration, collective organising, cultural contribution and ongoing struggles to protect and sustain community spaces across the city.

Visitors also had the opportunity to experience a replica of La Casita, created in collaboration with Unit38 and an extraordinary group of artists, makers and volunteers whose creativity, care and dedication brought the installation to life.

Events such as these demonstrate the importance of collective action in strengthening belonging, preserving cultural heritage and advocating for greater recognition of Latin Americans in the UK. They also reflect the ongoing work led by the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK (CLAUK) towards the inclusion of a Latin American category in the 2031 Census.

We extend our sincere thanks to Wards Corner CBS, the market traders, volunteers, collaborators, partners and everyone who contributed their time, knowledge and energy throughout the weekend. These achievements are the result of collective effort and shared commitment, demonstrating the power of community-led initiatives.

The weekend has also received national media attention, reflecting the increasing visibility of Latin American communities in London and across the UK.

Urban Room For Community Planning

Notes from El Barrio.

The Urban Room for Community Planning represents a collaborative process of research, community engagement, and participatory planning carried out with the Seven Sisters Market community. Through a series of workshops, community drop-ins, and three market bulletins, the project has documented the experiences, knowledge, and aspirations of traders, residents, practitioners, and researchers working together to shape the future of El Barrio. These activities have activated the new Wards Corner Community Space as an Urban Room, a space where the community and local initiatives can come together to foster conversations, debates, collective learning, and shared activities.

Rather than presenting a fixed model, the project brings together key lessons learned from the Seven Sisters Market, co-authored by the architectural co-operative UNIT38 and the Wards Corner Community Benefit Society. This experience translates those lessons into practical guidance (a toolkit) that can be adapted to different contexts, reflecting on the processes that enabled dialogue, collective decision-making, and the mobilisation of local knowledge to support more inclusive forms of urban development. The toolkit is intended as a resource for community organisations, local authorities, and urban practitioners, aiming to inspire future initiatives that recognise cultural heritage, strengthen community capacity, and promote equitable and sustainable urban futures grounded in collaboration, care, and local knowledge.

Building on the foundation of Market Tales, additional support has been secured through the Early Career Research Fund at the University of Derby to expand the project's consultation on the Community Plan, further activating the Seven Sisters Market community space as an Urban Room and deepening engagement with the community it serves.

You can read more about Market Tales.