This article reports on an event-driven case study which took the form of a curriculum intervention in order to examine how a class of fifth-graders understood, interpreted and commented visually on the Greek debt crisis. Considering art education as a safe place where students can critically investigate through relevant visual culture genres socio-political issues that affect their own lives, the author developed and implemented a political cartooning project. The students were engaged in making political cartoons about the Greek debt crisis and interrelated socio-political issues and events. A finding of the study was that the students located, identified and labelled the multiple facets of the Greek crisis in a way that was meaningful to them. They employed visual and/or linguistic metaphors as a humorous mechanism to create meaning and emphasised the enormous strains placed on Greek society. The article concludes that the inclusion of the Greek debt crisis in the art curriculum served as a tool for social awareness for the students and connected schooling with society. (Contains 7 figures.)