Storytelling is among the most commonly recommended tools in climate change education and among the least specified — "tell stories" is easy advice to give and hard to act on. This review gathers a decade of research on youth storytelling to establish what educators are actually doing with it, across classrooms, community programmes and land-based initiatives. Its contribution is practical: it separates out the different jobs storytelling can do, and is clear that none of them happen on their own.
The authors, based at Deakin University in Australia, note growing global interest among educators in using the arts to help young people think about the future — what the field calls futuring (imagining and exploring possible futures). Their own school-based project, Artefacts of the Future 2050, asks students to design an object representing a significant moment in the transition to a future world. Wanting to understand why educators are drawn to these approaches and how they are being used, they conducted a systematic literature review.
The team searched three academic databases (ProQuest, Education Source and ERIC) for studies published between 2014 and 2024 combining the arts, futures thinking, climate change or sustainability, and education. From 111 initial records, 25 studies met their relevance and quality criteria. Two reviewers independently assessed each record. The included studies came from 11 countries, with the United States most represented; individual study sizes ranged from four participants to nearly 3,000. Settings were primary/elementary (12 studies), secondary (7), one tertiary study, and one early childhood study. Note that this is a review of other people's research, not a study generating new data.
What they found
1. Drama and visual arts dominated. Process drama (where students and teachers improvise a story together in role) was common, alongside drawing, sculpture, murals and collage. Storytelling, film, design and dance appeared less often.
2. Cognitive gains were generally, but not always, reported. Several studies comparing groups found that arts-based activities improved environmental awareness more than conventional teaching. However, one study found no significant change in climate knowledge, and another found science misconceptions persisted afterwards.
3. Emotional responses were mixed. Studies reported increased empathy, motivation, self-efficacy and connection to place — but also guilt, emotional burden, and, in one case, frustration when students' garden plants died.
4. Physical and outdoor elements appeared central. The authors argue that taking learning outside and using the body gave students a different frame for engaging with environmental issues, and that making and sharing an object or performance opened routes into pro-environmental action.
5. These approaches do not suit everyone. Some students wanted to quit open-ended tasks; some older students reported learning nothing; in one study 13% became less engaged after the intervention.
6. Teachers report real barriers. A survey of 76 arts educators in the south-eastern United States identified time, resources, curriculum standardisation, and uncertainty about how to integrate the content.
What this means for practice
• Build in structured reflection. One study found students could engage with global issues inside the drama but could not connect them to the real world, which the authors attribute partly to teachers finding reflection sessions difficult.
• Expect uneven responses and plan for learners who find open-ended creative tasks uncomfortable rather than liberating.
• With younger children, several studies favoured building appreciation, belonging and connection over direct engagement with "messages of gloom and destruction".
• Exhibiting or performing the work to an audience appears to extend its reach, in several studies shifting adult audience members as well as students.
The Bottom Line
This systematic literature review examined 25 peer-reviewed studies published between 2014 and 2024, drawn from 11 countries, in which arts-based activities were used to help learners engage with climate change and imagine possible futures. Settings spanned early childhood through to university, though primary and secondary schools dominated. The authors found that drama and visual arts were the most common approaches, and that studies frequently reported gains in environmental knowledge, empathy, sense of agency, and willingness to act. The review also indicates that these approaches do not work uniformly: some learners disengaged, felt overwhelmed, or postponed action to adulthood. For practitioners, the review suggests that the physical, embodied and outdoor qualities of arts activities matter to their effect, and that structured reflection appears important for translating creative work into real-world understanding.