Creating alternative futures through storytelling: A case study from Serbia

This article focuses on the project Storytelling for Peace, Gender Partnership and Cultural Pluralism, initiated in 2009 in Novi Sad, Serbia, with the primary aim of promoting educational strategies which challenge the continuation of the dominator society's status quo and facilitate the emergence of alternative, progressive and socially inclusive futures. Constructive storytelling was chosen as an educational practice that can bring about change, and was used as a tool for the transfer of alternative worldviews because it is indirect, flexible and inexpensive. The main beneficiaries of the project were the students of the University of Novi Sad and teachers and children of Novi Sad primary schools. The project utilised local knowledge and languages to foster peace and partnership-oriented individual and social narratives through the process of alternative story writing and revision of traditional Serbian and European tales. The participants learned to deconstruct master narratives, to understand deep culture and how its underlying myths shape national identity. Alternative stories became a tool to teach critical thinking and promote a diversity of voices.