The Corner Shop

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A celebration of the corner shop from the stories of the families behind the counter and the customers in front.

The corner shop is a vital aspect of British heritage that has been shared by many cultural groups, owned and run by members of different communities. It is a shared landmark and - in the light of its decline – its continued existence on our streets, in the face of the increasing threat from the all-conquering supermarket, becomes a shared struggle.

In 2006 The Evening Standard reported as part of their ‘Save Our Shops’ campaign that, in the previous five years, 7,000 family or individually-owned convenience stores had disappeared in Britain. As this long-loved institution at the heart of Britain’s community life begins to disappear from our streets, this new site-specific theatre performance, The Corner Shop, celebrated the changing faces and cultures of the corner shop over the years.

In 2008, Black Country Touring collected memories, photographs and documents of shopkeepers, their families and customers of the shops in the Black Country, ranging from traditional English to South Asian to Iranian. Using this material as a starting point, Foursight Theatre & Black Country Touring created a new production working with a huge team of professionals and volunteers from the local community. The production was first performed in a disused shop in West Bromwich in 2008.

The Corner Shop was re mounted in October - November 2009 in a disused shop unit in the Mander Shopping Centre in Wolverhampton as part of Arts at The Centre, a festival of events in empty shops organised by Wolverhampton Arts & Museums Service.

The Corner Shop blog offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the transformation process of the site from an empty shop into a local high street environment, and followed the rehearsal process each day in the run-up to opening night. Click here to visit the blog .

The Corner Shop is part of a much larger project in partnership with Sandwell Museum Service, Sandwell Community History and Archive Service, English Heritage and Wolverhampton Arts and Museum Services. The creation of the project was originally supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Sir Barry Jackson Trust. The project included an education strand with a local Wolverhampton school.The new oral history recordings and any artefacts gathered during the creation of the project have been lodged at local and national archives and on the web as an ongoing community and heritage resource. To view the online archive, visit the Connecting Histories website.

A dedicated web site with information and resources on the whole project is currently in the planning stages in partnership with English Heritage and Black Country Touring.

The Corner Shop will be suitable for touring from late 2009 onwards. If you are interested in hosting some site-specific performances in your area, please contact Frances Land at Foursight Theatre.