#826: Critical Witnessing and Action: The Transformative Potential of Youth Storytelling through Climate Change Art

This research investigates how arts-based storytelling supports youth learning and agency within climate justice education. We view artistic practices as critical tools for fostering epistemic justice and decolonizing dominant structures that shape post-colonial science learning. Drawing on a case study of Arab immigrant youth, we examine how they used graphic novels to critically witness and respond to climate injustice in their community. Youth positioned themselves as active agents exposing visible harms while illuminating unseen systemic dimensions of environmental injustice. Their graphic novels make visible both explicit challenges and possibilities, showing observable environmental changes alongside hopeful pathways for action. Process and product collectively demonstrate capacity for empathy, critical analysis, and engagement across scales toward just futures. We argue that arts-based methods foster epistemic justice, amplify minoritized voices, and support justice-oriented science education. Implications include integrating multimodal artistic practices as sustainable, humanizing pathways for learning, activism, and systemic change.