Centerprise

When it opened in 1971 Centerprise was the only bookshop in Hackney. Its founders considered the opening of a bookshop in a working class area like Dalston to be a political act, that asserted access to books as a 'cultural right'.

More than just a bookshop, Centerprise was also a cafe, youth project, cultural centre, community office and meeting space, advice centre, playgroup, literacy classes and publishing project. A typical customer might pop in for a coffee and come out equipped with timely welfare advice or inspired to write their memoirs.

Centerprise's first location was at 34 Dalston Lane, but in 1974 the co-operative moved to a doublefronted shopfront up the road at 136-138 Kingsland High Street.

The bookshop stocked paperbacks provided by Penguin at first. Children’s books were given almost a third of the space until February 1973, when a separate children’s bookshop was opened down the road at 66a Dalston Lane.

From 2014 - 2017 On the Record ran a project documenting the history of Centerprise, which resulted in an archive at Bishospgate Institute, a website and a book which can be read online here.

Sources:

Rosa Schling, The Lime Green Mystery (2017), On the Record

A Hackney Autobiography archive, Bishopsgate Institute

Radical Bookshops Listing, Radical Bookshop History Project (November 2023) [Available online here, accessed 13.05.2025]