​In 2017 the  key inspiration for the procession was the children's book Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) by author Salman Rushdie. The allegorical story can be read as a defense for free speech, importance of imagination, and meaningful exchange. One of the lanterns created by participants was a boat with six figures. It was made in memory of all the children who  drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe that year. River of Light expanded its reach to include workshops not only at Valand Academy but also at Angereds Gymnasium and at Restad Gård, Vänersborg, Sweden's biggest asylum accommodation. Many students from Valand Academy and HDK and international artists including Moutaz Albashar and Mohanned Solaiman were engaged in the project. River of Light also partnered with B-Arts Staffordshire and A Bunda Samba Band.

He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many others that were still n the process of being invented could be  found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Stream of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead but  alive. (Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stores, 1990)