Readers expect texts to follow particular forms. Readers of novels expect fleshed-out characters, who struggle with each other and with events. Newspaper readers expect the same sections, in the same order, every day. Those who read assembly manuals expect to be guided – ideally, with some degree of clarity – through the assembly process.

Readers of community-based and academic texts have expectations, too. Community texts often celebrate local personalities and events in ways that say something important about local experiences, identities and values. Academic texts usually make evidence-based original claims and arguments, in ways that say something about the author's intelligence, training and rigour. Both kinds of texts are aimed at very specific audiences, which have different priorities and expectations and are likely to struggle in finding value in the other's traditions of knowledge production. Academic readers may find community texts not critical or thorough enough; community readers may find academic texts neither accessible nor relevant.

This book is an experimental text, aimed at both academic and community readers; thus, it both enacts and disrupts the expectations of both audiences. It is produced by people situated at various points within and across universities and communities, who believe that knowledge production is not limited to particular kinds of writers and audiences. Moreover, the artists, academics, students, parents, community development workers and community members whose words (and images) you will find in these pages have intentionally breached these boundaries, because we find real value in the knowledge we can produce together.

In some ways, this book is like a collection of essays. Essay collections bring together pieces that may or may not reference each other, build on each other or flow together, although they all address the same central topic. But this is also more than a collection of essays. Although its central topic is the South Yorkshire community of Rotherham, the collaboration that produced this book is as much a part of this text as the community that stands at its centre. Over the course of three years, a group of people, who initially came together to plan the research for the ‘Imagine’ project, collaborated on research, exhibitions, actions and, most recently, this book. Although the forms, languages and discourses we use differ, we all value what each of us has to say.