Our central goal in writing this book has been to demonstrate that communities produce their own forms of knowledge, and that those forms are valid – and valuable – ways of knowing. We set out to articulate the value of this kind of research for community knowledge production that is emergent, situated and future oriented.

We asked readers to keep these questions in mind as they read:

• • Whose voices count in collaborations and why?

• • What kinds of voices do artistic modes of enquiry let in?

• • How do we incorporate diverse voices in research?

• • What are the limitations of linguistically oriented research methods?

• • What do you do when you don't agree?

• • How does history contribute to an understanding of communities in the everyday?

• • How do places emerge in our minds?

• • What kinds of experiences shape the way we understand place?

• • Can places change and how do they change?

• • How can universities make things better in some way?

In this final reflection, we offer our readers a sense of the legacy of this book and identify its key features, in order to provide a summary of what we have learned from doing the book. We can identify four key themes:

• • thinking across difference;

• • the arts as a mode of inquiry and as an agent of change;

• • rethinking knowledge production practices;

• • hope and the importance of transformational change.

Here we offer our thoughts on these themes.

Thinking across difference

A multiplicity of voices contributes to a more complex and nuanced lens that is much needed. That voice is not single and unitary and this is important to recognise. In their work highlighting the diversity of writing in cities such as Bradford and London, Mcloughlin (2014) observe that writing about British Asian cities is ‘complex, often ambivalent, [and] potentially counter-hegemonic’. Part of this is a lack of consideration in some archival work of particular histories, and the issue of ‘important gaps, silences and discrepancies in the archive. This results in a more complex and subtle, if still inevitably incomplete, analysis of British Asian cities and their representation (McLoughlin, 2014, p.2). Our research resists certainty – while engaging strongly with lived realities, we acknowledge difference and dissensus within our work.