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Paper short abstract

Storytelling and artistic practices anchor education in crises. Our qualitative study confirmed that during COVID-19, they helped youth express, process emotions, and shape identity. As poetic knowledge, stories turn chaos into meaning, nurturing creativity, empathy, and resilience.

Paper long abstract

The paper explores the role of storytelling and artistic practices in education, especially in times of uncertainty and crisis. Stories act as anchors when the world becomes unstable, offering individuals and communities tools to understand experiences, process emotions, and strengthen identity. Within the SKUM project, numerous activities in kindergartens and schools demonstrated that storytelling is not merely a pedagogical method but a fundamental human need.

The importance of narrative proved particularly significant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when storytelling became a therapeutic practice for children and adolescents. By creating and sharing stories—through words, photography, or visual arts—young people expressed their concerns, hopes, and reflections on isolation, loss, and resilience. Narratives transformed moments of disruption into meaningful experiences, enabling self-reflection and mutual empathy.

The paper shows that storytelling teaches and strengthens in multiple ways: it contextualizes historical and cultural knowledge, fosters creativity, and enables critical engagement with reality. It also provides a way to confront personal and collective traumas, in line with Aristotle’s concept of catharsis. Positioning narrative as a first-person experience and a form of poetic knowledge highlights how stories give structure to chaos and create a shared world that can be re-imagined.

Thus, when the world trembles, stories ground us—they connect past and present, self and other, the personal and the communal. In unstable times, they provide stability while fostering creativity and resilience needed to face the challenges of contemporary life.