Koro Productions will bring Trading Stories, an immersive storytelling marketplace, to London’s Leadenhall Market on 18 and 19 September, presenting a two-day programme of site-specific performance, interactive encounters and artist-led installations.
The free event will use the market environment as a setting for exchange-based storytelling, with secret stalls, pop-up performances and participatory formats positioned throughout the public space. For organisations working across cultural programming, live events, retail destinations and visitor experience design, the project offers a useful example of how performance can activate civic and commercial settings without relying on fixed venue infrastructure.
Trading Stories has been designed around the idea of non-financial exchange. Participants are invited to trade memories, conversations, gestures and personal reflections through a series of structured artistic encounters. The format places social interaction at the centre of the work, creating a temporary cultural offer that sits within the existing rhythm of the market.
Migrant-Led Work Developed Through Koro Lab
The programme will premiere new immersive and interactive works developed through Koro Lab, the company’s artist development initiative for migrant and Global Majority theatre-makers. This gives Trading Stories a dual role: as a public-facing cultural event and as a platform for new creative practice within the UK’s immersive performance sector.
Koro specialises in immersive, interactive and site-responsive performance, with productions that place audiences within the structure of the story. Its approach brings together theatre, design and participation, using direct engagement to create experiences shaped by the people taking part.
For commissioners, cultural venues and place-making teams, the project shows how artist development can be linked to public space activation. It also highlights the value of supporting underrepresented creative voices within experiential formats, particularly where themes of movement, memory, belonging and identity are central to the work.
Programme Built Around Exchange And Encounter
Trading Stories will include six distinct experiences, each using a different form of exchange. Pepa Duarte’s The Barter will reframe the auction house as a space where stories replace money, with participants selecting objects and offering personal accounts in return.
King of More’s A Divination will draw on Bosnian coffee reading and clowning to create a slower, more intimate encounter. Munotida Chinyanga’s Don’t Talk To Strangers will operate as a pop-up stall where visitors select social interactions, favours, memories or acts of care, then engage directly with another person.
Touching Home by 27 degrees will present a living room shaped by the experiences of ten London migrants, using objects, sound and scent to explore ideas of home across different places. The Price Of Leaving by Devanshi Rungta and Vedika Kushalappa will use an Indian chai stall as the setting for conversations about what people carry when leaving home. African Activities will present A Nightjar Journey, a family-focused performance combining storytelling, puppetry and music through a narrative of migration from Ghana to England.
Value For Cultural And Destination Operators
For B2B audiences across the visitor experience sector, Trading Stories demonstrates how temporary cultural programming can support destination identity, dwell time and community connection. Its modular format could be relevant for markets, heritage districts, festivals, retail environments and public realm programmes seeking low-barrier artistic activity with strong local relevance.
The project also points to the growing role of live performance in place activation. By placing artists within an operational market setting, Koro is creating a model that links public engagement, talent development and cultural placemaking through a compact, time-limited programme.
As destinations seek distinctive reasons for audiences to spend time in shared spaces, Trading Stories provides a considered example of immersive work designed for public environments, social exchange and culturally specific storytelling.
