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This chapter aims to sketch out Rotherham as a remembered place, where people hold knowledge and experiences. Rotherham is also a place in the future. The chapter explores ways in which communities can be represented differently in an age of uncertainty and austerity. It focuses on creativity and the arts as a source of hope and a way of imagining better communities. This draws on the central purpose of the ‘Imagine’ project. As part of the ‘Imagine’ project, this chapter reveals a series of interlinked projects within Rotherham, exploring common everyday cultures, writing in the community, artistic images of Rotherham, and oral histories of Rotherham.
This chapter articulates an approach to knowing through art, in that we recognise the need for artists as individuals to intervene and change the world. It also argues that the process of making involves a process of change, and art includes a huge diversity of practice and a commitment to knowing together and making together. Art as knowing can be developed through conversations, walks, in moments of interaction that create spaces for more things to happen. Art is a process, and here we think about how things emerge — stuff comes from stuff: trying, helping, working, making, talking — new ideas come from doing.
This is a book that challenges contemporary images of place. Too often we are told about deprived neighbourhoods but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham. Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography, and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a how to for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.
This chapter introduces the research methodology underpinning this book. It first defines the terms of ‘research’ and ‘methodology’ and discusses the implicit — and often unspoken — ideas about what research is and how it should operate. Academically situated researchers undergo long training and socialisation processes that involve learning the forms, practices, traditions, theories, and languages of their disciplines. As they move through those processes, they gain an expertise presumed to uniquely qualify them as researchers in that discipline. When these experts then produce knowledge, that knowledge is often endowed with a special authority; indeed, it is usually regarded as wholly different from the knowledge that those without academic credentials produce.
This chapter considers some questions related to policy development, as policy impacts all areas of community life. In particular, it explores the concept of social cohesion in neighbourhoods, which is currently a key policy issue. The context for this includes internal conflicts between groups competing for the same scarce resources, structural inequality, housing and environment neglect, crime, and disorder, creating segregation and a culture of ‘us and them’. Moreover, this chapter finds that arts methodology is a tool for ethnic minority women and young people to negotiate boundaries and hostile territories and to engage in policy questions on community cohesion through photography, portraits, and poetry.
This is a book that challenges contemporary images of ‘place’. Too often we are told about ‘deprived neighbourhoods’ but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this unique book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham.
Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a ‘how to’ for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.
This chapter suggests that this volume’s insights on collaborative ethnography could have even more impact if it were generated in collaboration with policy contributors, and it is notable that the local authority has worked in partnership with the ‘Imagine’ project in Rotherham. This points to other opportunities to bring together communities, local policy makers, and academics in generating knowledge for future policy making. If community-based collaborative research is to make its full impact, then it would need to develop beyond a small number of case study areas and be strategically planned, resourced, and structured. The chapter also considers how — and what type of — academic research is prioritised, and how research careers are incentivised to include more collaborative, community-based knowledge production.
This chapter turns to ‘the Rotherham project’, in which participants aged between 12 and 16 were involved in youth projects at Rotherham United Community Sports Trust. The project aimed to use photography as a means of exploring identity and to investigate themes related to the ethics of representation, informed by the participants’ first-hand experience of living in Rotherham. The young men explored the town on foot and by minibus, visiting the town centre, the surrounding countryside, and places of special interest, such as a local castle. During the photography sessions, the young men highlighted the things they liked about Rotherham, the challenges they found concerning, and their hopes for the future.
This chapter tells the story of community development in Rotherham and discusses some implications for policy and practice. The 1990s saw a decline in community development due to a lack of funding for posts, a lack of training being offered, changing funding priorities, and government policies. However, community development is now back on the agenda again through the work of the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), who want to give more power back to local neighbourhoods and communities in order for them to have a bigger say on local issues, participate in decision making, and design and deliver services themselves.
This chapter features pictures produced by the author. They were commissioned in response to the ‘Imagine’ project’s focus on the histories and cultures of Rotherham, particularly around the themes of ‘silk and steel’. Furthermore, they offer a historical account of what it was like to come to the UK, but they also depict: a felt and embodied response to the hardships and loneliness of a young bride coming to the UK; the experience of a British Asian man working in the steel mills; a suitcase filled with special memories; and the visceral experience of racism for a young child. Taken together, these images are living history. The chapter describes them here in the context of the author’s life in Rotherham.
