What is body mapping?

Body mapping is a creative research technique that encourages participants to take a step back from words and language to use visual images and/or symbols to explore their feelings about a certain topic e.g. how they feel about a service they have received or an experience they have been through. This method attempts to make participation in research more accessible for those who may otherwise be reluctant to volunteer to take part due to literacy or confidence issues.

Typically taking place over several days, participants trace an outline of their body and are then encouraged to use a variety of artistic mediums to decorate this outline in a way that is meaningful to them and that embodies or represents their relevant experience.

As our training workshop only lasted a couple of hours, after learning about the theory behind body mapping, we created our own mini body maps on A3 paper. We did this in response to our experiences and feelings towards certain projects we had worked on.

Below is an example of one of the body maps produced by Researcher and Analyst Maria Gallagher in relation to her experience going into prisons for the first time when working on an evaluation for the Ministry of Justice. Maria experimented using different materials such as tissue paper, feathers, and newspaper clippings to represent her feelings of fear, initial confusion, and growth.

Putting it into practice

In February 2024, Head of Operations Daisy Elvin, and Researchers and Analysts Maria Gallagher and Danielle Jones were in Warwickshire conducting fieldwork for the Serious Violence Community Consultation; this was the first opportunity TONIC had to implement body mapping as a research method.

The purpose of this consultation was to understand how local people perceived the areas in which they live, focusing particularly on local areas that have been identified as high risk of violence within communities. The views gathered by local people were then to be used to help inform the implementation of Warwickshire County Council’s Serious Violence Strategy.

As we were asking questions that focused on themes of belonging, identity, and community we decided that this would be a good project to integrate body mapping into our research. As we engaged with a lot of young people in this fieldwork, using a more creative research method felt like an exciting way to explore feelings and perceptions about their community in an engaging, interactive way.

Over 20 young people took part in the two body mapping workshops, facilitated by the TONIC team, and the feedback from participants was very positive. Using a visual, tactile method allowed the young people to be creative and express abstract thoughts that they may not have been able to otherwise verbalise.

We spoke to each of the young people as they were creating their body maps, encouraging them to prioritise visual images over words and prompting them to consider their emotions and feelings about the research questions for consideration. The participants also provided us with ‘testimonios’ that explained what the symbols on their body maps represented.

The body maps provided an interesting starting point from which we were also able to have one-on-one conversations with the young people, certain drawings acted as prompts or anecdotes when participants were unsure on how to answer questions.

Would I recommend body mapping?

Absolutely! Body mapping was a refreshing method for us to gather qualitative data in a creative and expressive way. Participants enjoyed the workshop and the opportunity to explore questions in a way they had not seen before. From our perspective as researchers, the data we collected was rich, giving an insightful view into the experiences of young people living in Warwickshire.

Written by Danielle Jones, Researcher and Analyst at TONIC.