The living libraries intermodal storytelling framework: an expressive arts approach to story preservation, cultural continuity, and intergenerational connection

Storytelling has served as a means of preserving identity, transmitting wisdom, fostering resilience, and sustaining connection across individuals, families, and communities. Yet stories, oral traditions, and cultural knowledge remain vulnerable to loss when they are not intentionally shared across generations. This manuscript introduces the Living Libraries Intermodal Storytelling Framework, a conceptual expressive arts model designed to support the exploration, understanding, preservation, transmission, and expansion of stories through creative and relational processes. Grounded in Expressive Arts Therapy Theory, Narrative Identity Theory, and Collective Memory and Intergenerational Knowledge Transmission Theory, the framework consists of eight phases organized into three domains: Entering the Story, Understanding the Story, and Preserving the Story. The framework positions storytelling as a primary intermodal expressive arts process that may be explored through writing, movement, rhythm, music, visual art, voice, poetry, and other creative modalities, offering a structured approach for preserving and transmitting lived experience across generations.