The Initiative
Water Stories is a new collaborative initiative between the World Water Film Festival (WWFF), the Lo-TEK Institute, and the Brave Blue World Foundation. It is built on a single conviction: that the world's most urgent water challenges will only be addressed when diverse knowledge systems are brought into a genuine relationship, and when more people are invited to see water not simply as a resource, but as a living system that must be in a relationship too.
We also believe that FILM is the most powerful medium to bridge the gap, highlight stories and solutions, and ignite dialogue and action.
The Connective Thread: Story and Design
Each element of this initiative - documentary storytelling and Lo-TEK living technologies - offers a different pathway for the transmission of ecological knowledge across generations. Together, they reveal how relationships between people, water, and place can be carried forward.
The Lo-TEK movement, founded by landscape designer, author, and academic Julia Watson, argues that the most sophisticated water and ecological technologies on earth are not designed in laboratories: they are created by communities who have been solving the same problems for thousands of years, in the same landscapes, with the same constraints. The knowledge is embedded in practice and material. Lo-TEK is one philosophy, grounded by two entities, the Lo-TEK Institute and Office - bridging imagination to implementation - transforming living ancestral knowledge into both climate-resilient places and the cultural capacity to imagine new futures.
The Water Stories initiative brings together the leading film-based storytelling organizations, Brave Blue World Foundation and the World Water Film Festival, with Lo-TEK to capture stories showcasing solutions to share with the world. A film does not just record a story - it makes it possible for someone who was not there to feel what it was like to be there. It is a communal gathering around a shared experience, where knowledge moves from those who hold it to those who need it.
Program Outline: Climate Week NYC
An evening to formally introduce the Water Stories initiative.
5:00 PM – 5:30PMWelcome Reception
5:30 PM Start of Program, Welcome and Short Film; Host Thank You
WWFF Short Film 10-mins: Emmy-Award winning "Water Guardians" opens our Climate Week program not because it is a film about policy, but because it is a film about what happens before policy becomes possible. Water Guardians reminds the audience what a relationship with water actually feels like before we ask them to think about saving it. These young surfers are not waiting for permission to belong to the ocean. That spirit - that the water is yours, that community is the technology, and that as the climate shifts and access narrows, their stories reveal the quiet power of care, resistance, and healing—reshaping what it means to belong. Brief discussion to follow with the filmmaker and some of the subjects from the film.
5:50 PM Keynote: Julia Watson
Keynote: Lo-TEK & The Intelligence of Water Julia Watson, Founder Lo-TEK Movement, Co-founder Lo-TEK Institute & Co-Director Lo-TEK Office An anchor presentation on Lo-TEK - how Indigenous communities around the world have engineered living, nature-based water systems that outperform modern infrastructure in resilience, cost, and ecological health. A case for why the future of water belongs to those who have always understood it. Includes a short introduction to the Office and the Institute, which segues into Melissa's introduction to the Living Water Curriculum.
6:10 PM Lo-TEK Institute
Melissa Hunter Gurney, Co-founder of the Lo—TEK Institute, introduces the Institute's educational vision through the Living Water curriculum, demonstrating how the stories shared through film become part of a broader educational ecosystem. The presentation explores how documentary storytelling, ancestral knowledge, and living technologies extend into curricula, institutional partnerships, and community-based learning that cultivate long-term ecological literacy and systems change.
6:20 PM - 6:50 PM Film Program from Brave Blue World Foundation & World Water Film Festival
A curated selection of short documentary films from the WWFF and Brave Blue World libraries, grounding the ideas of the evening in human stories from the frontlines of the global water crisis.
Our Blue World Short: Select Excerpts from Brave Blue World
WWFF Short: Little Town with a Big Heart - Lynchburg's Water Story
Lynchburg, South Carolina, is a town of 300 people who affectionately refer to their community as "a little town with a big heart." Lynchburg has dire drinking water and wastewater needs, often resorting to bottled water for drinking and cooking. With help from the US Water Alliance, the town hopes to qualify for federal funding assistance.
7:00 PM - 7:30 PM ROUNDTABLE WITH Q&A
Roundtable: From Permission to Wisdom - With Julia Watson, Paul O'Callaghan, and other panelists, Robert Strand (moderator)
A dialogue exploring how the corporate sector, policymakers, and institutions can move from consulting Indigenous communities to actively funding and implementing their design wisdom - and what that shift looks like in practice in support of community water infrastructure and design.
7:30 PM - 8:00 PM Closing Reception