This chapter interrogates the politics of knowledge production and communication: how knowledge can be used as a political instrument; how knowledge production is a competitive field; how political battles translate into battles on local knowledge. It is about the process of trial and error we went through (as the collective of Yeoville Studio, but also I, as its individual director), in particular in the rising debate on the place of street trading in Yeoville's main street: Rockey-Raleigh.

Trading was indeed a key area of research within the Studio: it had been jointly identified and selected as a central arena of local political debate by Yeoville Studio academics and its three community partners. From the outset, in various public encounters with communities, we made it clear that we were not to become a local stakeholder in Yeoville; we were to produce research and make it available for public use in their own political endeavours. However, in retrospect it was naïve of us to think this position would be easy to hold or even to define clearly in complex, fuzzy and dynamic situations.

Few authors engaging in action research lift the veil on their own shortcomings, errors of judgement, imperfect or disappointing results. Few enter the complicated field of local politics in which their research unfolds. Not only is it a difficult exercise on its own. Reflections on action research are also often framed by the necessities of reporting to funders, new fundraising perspectives, the fear of losing credibility through revealing one's own mistakes and limitations and the need to protect participants’ anonymity, as well as the relationship established with them that too harsh or too direct a critique could jeopardise. As a consequence, the various fields of academia interested in university–community engagement seldom expose the intricate complexities of local politics and the real challenges of attempting to support or influence change from this local scale of urban governance. This is what motivates this chapter: to tell a story and to reflect on it, as honestly as possible, with the limited distance I have, as both a witness and an agent in several interconnected but different arenas.