Water Stories: From Permission to Wisdom with the World Water Film Festival, Lo-TEK Institute & Brave Blue World Foundation

Water Stories is a new collaborative initiative between the World Water Film Festival, the Lo-TEK Institute, and the Brave Blue World Foundation, built on a single conviction: that the world's most urgent water challenges will only be addressed when diverse knowledge systems are brought into genuine relationship - and when more people are invited to see water not as a resource to be managed, but as a living system we are part of. On the evening of Thursday, September 24th, we invite you to the launch of Water Stories at reSOUND at HERO, Rockefeller Center - one of New York City's most extraordinary immersive art spaces. The program opens with the Emmy Award-winning short film Water Guardians, following a diverse group of young surfers in New York City reclaiming their relationship with the ocean, and sets the tone for an evening about belonging, resilience, and what becomes possible when community comes together around water. Julia Watson, founder of the Lo-TEK movement and co-founder of the Lo-TEK Institute, will deliver the keynote address on how Indigenous communities around the world have engineered living, nature-based water systems that outperform modern infrastructure in resilience, cost, and ecological health. The film program that follows draws from two of the world's leading water storytelling libraries: a curated excerpt from Brave Blue World Foundation's Our Blue World, and the WWFF short Little Town with a Big Heart - the story of Lynchburg, South Carolina, a community of 300 people navigating a water crisis with courage, ingenuity, and the question of whether nature-based solutions could be part of their future. The evening closes with a roundtable - "From Permission to Wisdom" - bringing together Julia Watson, Paul O'Callaghan of Brave Blue World Foundation, water diplomat Henk Ovink of IHE Delft, and other leading voices to explore how the corporate sector, policymakers, and institutions can move from consulting Indigenous communities to actively funding and implementing their design wisdom. This is not a conference. It is a gathering. Come ready to feel something.