The Challenges and Opportunities of Re-studying Community on Sheppey: Young People's Imagined Futures

The ‘Living and Working on Sheppey: Past, Present and Future’ project took its starting point from the research undertaken by Ray Pahl and his team three decades ago on the Isle of Sheppey. In 2009–11, we revisited some of Pahl's archived material, collected new (including some replicated) data and produced new materials, working collaboratively with community members of the Blue Town Heritage Centre on Sheppey. In this article, we examine the methodological challenges and opportunities of re-studying communities in this way, discuss the implications of community involvement in carrying out a re-study, and present some findings from one aspect of the re-study: young people's imagined futures in 1978 and 2009–10.