This project is envisioned as an academic research project with focus on exploring and building knowledge about the role of oral and digital storytelling, and the arts (including community arts), as well as the relevance of creative practices in general, in creating safe healing and enabling spaces for immigrant, refugee youth and other marginalised and vulnerable communities. Through the journey of this project, the objective is also to examine how spaces and environments that feel safe and enabling can shape an individual’s sense of self and find belonging in a community where they can be who they wish to be, leading them to `experience’ substantive citizenship and feelings of integration. While scholarship exists that validates educational and socio-emotional benefits of oral storytelling for students, limiting beliefs about its role continue to shape existing pedagogical practices that do not recognize its relevance and value in classroom settings (Dwivedi, 2023). In fact, in line with (Mello, 2001), storytelling approaches and practices bring multicultural awareness in collective settings, leading to the emergence of healthy self-concepts as well as the development of imagination, moral concepts and stronger notions of self-identity. Using such strategies, including through role modeling and teaching youth these skills, with the objective of self-expression. Particularly in the case of migrant youth, (and migrants in general too), the deficit narrative is predominant-they are always seen as recipients of services and consumers of resources rather than producers of knowledge or goods. Engaging in personal storytelling then or feeling enabled to create storytelling spaces and experiences is about finding confidence and language, voice and agency. It becomes a way to also validate the cultural resources, life-worlds, and the resilience youth carry, including what may be considered “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al., 1992). At a time when advanced digital technologies are pervasive, having usurped many other forms of engagement and influence, leading to exacerbation in digital bullying and mental health challenges like anxiety, isolation, and disengagement- particularly in the case of youth- it is important to bring the emphasis back to more personalised, `human’ and `humane’ ways of engaging and communicating with each other. In addition to the academic research and knowledge production focus in the project, it includes capacity building as one of its significant pillars, with the target groups being youth (ages 15-25). At TNO, based on previous conversations and identified needs, it would be possible to include seniors too so the inter-generational dimensions of integration and belonging can also be explored and better understood. These objectives could be achieved through creating safe dialogue spaces, using storytelling and workshopping strategies with focus on topics already identified as gaps and needs. We hope to also include another community partner- the Community Music Schools of Toronto program- as we have recently collaborated with them as they too fit the target cohort; and they support youth engagement in high needs neighborhoods-in Regent Park and in Jane and Finch.