Watershed Stories

Watershed Stories is a public art project that reawakened the Seven Canyons Refuge in Salt Lake City, UT with a sound installation that reintroduced the sounds of the Salt Lake Valley’s streams to the now dry fountain. The initial installation took place in October 2025, and is currently in conversation to be made as a permanent fixture in Liberty Park with a coinciding archive.

​The project is funded by the Wake the Great Salt Lake project grant, supported by the Salt Lake Arts Council, Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

About Watershed Stories

Watershed Stories was a site-specific sound installation at the Seven Canyons Refuge (formerly Seven Canyons Fountain) in Liberty Park, Salt Lake City, UT. The installation placed 14 speakers, each with individual recordings taken from the Salt Lake Valley’s seven main creeks, into the dry fountain as a means to reintroduce the sensation of water to the space.

In addition, the project hosted workshops that took place around Salt Lake City in April 2025. The workshops invited the public to locations with direct access to water in order to develop a conversation about our collective access, stories, and connections to the waters flowing through the Salt Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake itself. These conversations and stories were recorded and combined with the creek recordings to create a comprehensive composition centered around water access, the current fear of water loss in Salt Lake (particularly the potential loss of the Great Salt Lake), and the community effort needed to solve these problems.