This project is a collaboration with the GREAT Start program (Home Visiting and Doula support) at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District.
The project explores and documents the embodied experiences of Home Visitors and Doulas. As it is often the case with labor that revolves around care, the emotional, physical and social impact of this kind of work is often invisible or undervalued.
Through a series of participatory mapping sessions, we gained a deep and insightful analysis of their bodily experiences, using individual and collective body maps. We complemented individual maps with a contextual perspective, exploring how bodies move across spaces, domestic contexts and institutional settings. By incorporating an element of physical space (connection to land), we explored how the Home Visitors and Doulas are socially situated, including how they perceive power, privilege and positionality across multiple spaces, and how they negotiate institutional and ancestral forms of knowledge.
As part of a holistic understanding of participatory research, we also held conversations about well-being, and co-created meanings about health and wellness. We also provided participants with opportunities to experiment with care practices that they can incorporate within their routines and with the families they work with.
One of the final results from this process is a participatory body map, where we shape a collective narrative that brings together the social, cultural, emotional and embodied aspects of caring in our communities. We are working on developing the body map as a tool for advocacy, challenging stereotypes, and breaking the silence about the work of Home Visitors and Doulas in our society.
