1. Recreate your local London market
One of the main locations in ‘The Kitchen’ is the market where its residents gather to get food and supplies, and to socialise. To capture its frantic buzz, Tavares and Kaluuya drew on their memories of visiting Brixton and Camden Markets as kids – as well as the shops on Streatham High Road and the Holloway Road. With ‘The Kitchen’, they wondered what it would be like if everyone who lived and ran shops in these areas was forced into one tight space due to the housing crisis.
‘What does it look like when everyone is fighting for space? What do the markets look like? What does the housing look like if it’s all in one mega-building? We wanted this place to be London’s last village,’ says Tavares.
For filming, the markets were constructed at Bethnal Green’s LEB Building, once an Electricity Board headquarters in the ’50s. ‘They gave us the freedom to do what we wanted there,’ says Tavares. ‘We built the market in the car park.’