Artivism is the use of creative and art-based methods of expression to denounce social injustice, cultivate awareness, and motivate change in society (Nossel 2016). Our artivist approach is articulated through a series of multiple co-creative approaches such as (i) comic strips, (ii) the realisation of paper bio-degradable stickers to place in key public spaces in Malmö, Delhi and London and (iii) a range of co-creative and participatory methodologies such as body-mapping.

This range of approaches is designed to capture the opinions and experiences of key stakeholders such as women’s organisations in Malmö, Dalit women and international organisations in Delhi in order to elicit relevant discussions between academics, civil society organisations, health professionals, industry, policy makers and the general public in the course of the major event and exhibition taking place in London at the end of the project.

There has recently been a proliferation of creative and participative methodologies across the social sciences (Manney 2015, Kara 2015) which could be classified in different ways. Some of these approaches stem more directly from a visual sociology tradition (Rose 2016), others go beyond the visual to include more sensorial and ‘embodied’ ways of producing knowledge (Lisiak 2018, Vacchelli 2018), harnessing personal experiences of the research participants often developing into an artefact – be it tangible or digital-crafted with the help of a facilitator. The PI of this project, Prof Elena Vacchelli, brings to the table her extensive experience as co-creative facilitator in addition to academic subject expertise.

Co-creative research approaches are becoming increasingly established to study a variety of themes and have proved particularly effective for working with marginalised groups. In Malmö we will use comics in the context of a co-creative workshop with feminist cartoonists, academics and stakeholders including women’s organisations. Comics have been discussed in the literature as a particularly effective way of disseminating research findings (Saulnier-Sinan 2017). In Delhi we will use body-mapping storytelling.

Body mapping storytelling is a type of participatory research where participants engage in multimodal and sensory storytelling. This is done through tracing a life-size body outline and using it as a canvas to communicate lived experiences. Body maps are often enriched though drawings, collages and fabrics. This approach has traditionally been used to explore personal and collective experiences of illness, violence and trauma while serving as a catalyst to facilitate the collection of rich data (Gastaldo and Rivas-Quarneti 2018, Giorgi, Pizzolati and Vacchelli 2021).