Water Experiences

This article analyses the Po River Blue Fest, held between Bologna and Ravenna in May 2025 as part of the LIFE CLIMAX PO project, as a cultural tool for raising awareness of water and climate change issues. Spread over two complementary days — dedicated respectively to storytelling and situated experiences — the festival intertwined environmental communication, landscape crossing practices and collective design processes. The first day, focused on the role of scientific and territorial narratives, featured a contribution by journalist Elisabetta Tola, offering a critical look at the responsibility of climate storytelling in the current information ecosystem. The second day translated these contents into experiential practices, developed by students of the Master's Degree in Advanced Design at the University of Bologna, who activated forms of ecological learning in the landscapes of the San Vitale Pine Forest and the Darsena di Ravenna. The text offers a reflection on the value of experiences — both narrated and lived — as tools for realigning perception, knowledge and action, highlighting the role of design in generating forms of collective awareness and building climate communities capable of addressing the environmental transformations currently underway.