Here, we offer a pen-portrait of Rotherham, not as a ‘typical’ town, but as a town that resides in people's memories, in their lived experience and includes their futures. Places draw people together through communities of interest and deep-seated and historically located collective identities. Making sense of place involves making sense of different communities as well as cultures and histories.

We consulted the literature on community studies to make sense of Rotherham as a place, but we also draw on the voices in this book and the oral histories we have collected, as well as visual representations and poetry. This book focuses more specifically on the lived experience of people living in Rotherham. The book is written by people who live in Rotherham as well as those who live outside Rotherham and, in some cases, in countries other than the UK. We do, however, argue that people living in the communities under discussion (and in this case, Rotherham), have key and insightful research insights to offer the field, which may challenge ‘traditional’ representations of communities.

We aim to sketch out Rotherham as a remembered place, where people hold knowledge and experiences. It is also a place in the future. This book explores ways in which communities can be represented differently in an age of uncertainty and austerity. We focus 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, we created 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 book has developed from that project.

Our book is interdisciplinary and this introduction reflects our different disciplines – Kate draws on literary theory and social anthropology, and Miles on social theory and town and regional planning. We write it as a conversation between people, but drawing on other sections of the book to provide an introduction both to the book and to Rotherham. We recognise that our work is multi-voiced and multifaceted, and this is partly our intention in writing this chapter.

When we began to think about Rotherham, we started by thinking about the past and the different ways people held memories of Rotherham.