Creative Integration Strategies: Strengthening Community Through Digital Storytelling
U.S. Fulbright Scholar research project
Estonian Academy of Arts (IxD.ma)
Ukrainian Cultural Centre
Estonian Refugee Council
Tallinn, Estonia 2023-2026
"Mapping Your Journey" is a community-based, participatory project developed during my tenure as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in 2023 at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) within the Interaction Design MA (IxD.ma) program. Working in close collaboration with the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Tallinn, the Estonian Refugee Council (ERC), and Ukrainian poet Katja Novak, the initiative focuses on honoring refugee narratives and fostering social integration through creative writing, digital media, and physical artifact creation.
In its primary iteration, the project exists as an interactive platform featuring an open-access facilitator toolkit, student creative writing archives, and a collective visual-text video installation.
Creative writing holds the power to bring communities together—it defines who we are, helps process lived experience, and encourages us to ground ourselves in the present through intentional observation. Through written expression, individual stories become undeniable, allowing shared ideas, resilience, and personal histories to resonate across cultural boundaries.
The core objective of Mapping Your Journey is to bring students and young adults from diverse backgrounds together in a shared expressive process, cultivating empathy, agency, and stronger community bonds. Centered on the workshop theme "Mapping Your Journey to School," participants begin with close observation—witnessing a moment, recalling resonant memories, and translating those lived experiences into vivid, precise words.
Designed for adaptability, the project includes a comprehensive toolkit and a curated series of writing prompts that can be deployed as a single session or structured as a sequence of 60-minute workshops across educational and community settings.
The project website can be accessed here or with the QR code below.
"Mapping Your Journey" composite video with poetic excerpts from workshop participants. 2024
"Mapping Your Journey" workshop participants at the Ukrainian Cultural Center, Tallinn, Estonia. 2023
Created in collaboration with Katja Novak. Special thank you to the Estonian Refugee Council, Vabaduse Kool, Tõnismäe Riigigümnaasium, the Ukrainian Cultural Center, and Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia. Andrea Wollensak gratefully acknowledges financial support for this educational toolkit by the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassy Tallinn, Estonia. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Fulbright Program, the Government of the United States, or the U.S. Embassy, Tallinn. 2026