The Make Water Work Podcast - Episode 48 Featuring Britton Smith

Episode 48: Catalyst Collab - Britton Smith

In this episode of the Make Water Work Catalyst Collab, Isaac Pellerin sits down with Britton Smith, founder and lead artist of Britton & The Sting, who served as a guide at Catalyst 2025 and led one of the most talked-about sessions of the year. They dig into how a commission for a theater on the Hudson turned into Mama, a project built entirely around water as a living, relational force, and what happened when Britton brought that same energy into a room full of water professionals.

In this episode, we cover:

• How a commission from Little Island, an amphitheater on the Hudson River, turned into Mama, a 16-song project reframing water as alive rather than just a resource
• Why Britton calls water "a map into how we should be living our lives more sustainably"
• The connection between water justice, environmental racism, and who historically got to live upstream versus downstream
• Inside Britton's Catalyst 2025 session: using water as a mirror to ask what parts of ourselves we leave at home, and why that question moved a room of water professionals to tears
• Why the "curse of knowledge" is a bigger barrier to public trust than most technical experts realize
• Britton's take on storytelling versus facts, and why "whoever tells the best story wins"
• Where to catch Britton & The Sting on tour

If you work in water communications, community engagement, or utility leadership, this conversation will change how you think about the parts of yourself you bring to the work.