Celebrating London's Independent Traders: A New 2021 Project

A new project starting 1st November 2021 and running until 30th June 2022 to photograph and celebrate London's Independent Shops and Businesses

REGISTER NOW TO FIND OUT MORE AND HELP TO SHAPE THE PROJECT

There is no doubt that our High Street businesses have struggled for many years now, competing with major brands who have strong supply chains and can provide low-cost goods quickly and easily, either in person or online. But there are areas where small family businesses have existed for many generations and which are still there through entrepreneurship, clever ideas and/or through serving their local community. Many provide basic essentials to local people, others provide personal services such as hairdressing, others fix bicycles and others provide outlets for fine art and luxury items. Of course there are coffee shops, books shops etc. – too many to list in this summary.

Objective:

Continuing the Celebrating London theme, we wish to celebrate and record these Independent Shops and Businesses both old and new, photograph them and in some cases tell the stories behind them: stories about some of the people who run them, how they started, and how they see the future.

Project length

6 months – 1st November 2021 to 30th April 2022 (includes Christmas, Winter Sales and Easter/Spring). We may continue beyond this Phase if people wish to.

Locations

All over London or the town wherever you live.

Photography

How you represent the subject is up to each individual photographer but at the end of the day we hope to see a variety of photographic output ranging from a ‘panorama’ of the local high street, to an individual shop front or trader, street scenes of people ‘shopping’ and then interior shots (3-5 images) to go with the stories you have collected – not too long – max 150 words?

Project Organisation

We will need volunteers to assist in bringing this project together, in looking after various areas, tracking what has some coverage and what might have been neglected.

You will be able to read more very soon, but we are not quite ready to launch this project: it is not proving quite so simple, logistically! However, you can and start to gather your own ideas, your own pictures and do your own research – particularly with Christmas & New Year coming and with the High Streets coming to live. – you are welcome to do so.

If you are interested, we would like you to sign up to a preliminarily discussion to further define the project. Follow the Sign Up link on this page to take part in the “preliminary discussion” on Zoom and help shape the project. We will be back in touch very soon on this to confirm a day (or days) and times.

Any questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail Judy londonro2@rps.org or David London@rps.org