This section reflects on the specificities of knowledge production, in the context of the Yeoville Studio. The context is marked first by the concentration of a multiplicity of intersecting research initiatives, projects and approaches on a neighbourhood over a period of two years (sometimes extended to three through individual research projects). Second, the Studio implied constant, if uneven, engagement, dialogue and feedback, at times reframing the research object and knowledge production processes, with members or groups in the ‘community’.

The point made by the collection of chapters and the vignettes in this section is not particularly new – that knowledge and its production are a highly political process. By this, we mean knowledge production is a process that constructs power, reveals but also challenges existing social fault lines, and generates a great deal of contestation and contention – which we perhaps underestimated when starting this project.

These contentions were internal, within the Yeoville community, between different knowledge holders or knowledge builders, amongst whom the Yeoville Studio academic team became, willy-nilly, a significant (if temporary) local stakeholder. There were also tensions, often productive in the context of a functional and collegial team at Wits, within the academic community itself. The different disciplines involved in the studio had different ways of working, ways of looking, of understanding and imagining, that highlighted both the challenges and the benefits of working in interdisciplinary ways.

Most important to us as an outcome, as it was the original intention of the Studio, the knowledge production process and its products sometimes also triggered external forms of contention: agents used knowledge from the Studio to make claims on public authorities. These contentions could be short term or long term; a voluntary (based on existing and chosen partnership with the Studio) or an involuntary effect of the Studio; progressive (the intention of the Studio) or, at times, uncontrollable and appropriated by more regressive, reactionary or even undemocratic forces.

What we learnt through the Studio is that the internal and external dynamics triggered by the process of intense, publicised and to a degree participatory knowledge production are essentially intertwined and inextricable in practice.