About
Festival of Trust is a grassroots movement: finding trust where it already lives, and building it where it is missing.
The movement
Grow trust, one pocket at a time
An independent format, with soul inside: a grassroots movement, created and carried by a group of members of the soul.com community.
A Festival of Trust is a one-day (or multi-part) gathering that helps a community notice the trust it already holds and grow it. Each festival is named for its place — Festival of Trust Cape Town — and organised by the people it is for.
The concept
Start from the tension, then turn
We do not claim trust is fine. We hold both truths. Trust seems to be disappearing: rivalry at work, tension between neighbours, unsafe streets. But look closer, and trust still quietly holds: a promise kept between relatives, a neighbour who shows up unasked, a stranger who returns a wallet with the cash still inside.
Society cannot run without trust. Where it exists, it deserves celebration. Where it is missing, it must be built. Not from above — from where each of us stands. Pocket by pocket, connected, the world starts to look less trustless than the story suggests.
Trust grows by doing, not by saying so.
Pockets and the web
A single pocket is fragile. A web of pockets holds weight.
Trust already lives in small pockets: a friendship, a neighbour, a trusted teacher. The festival helps people notice those pockets and draw them closer, so scattered points connect into threads, and threads into a web.
Each festival adds pockets and threads; the festivals themselves connect into a wider web, community by community.
Two ways
One method, two entry points
Communities host a Festival of Trust in their own place, with the backing of a funder who believes trust is worth investing in and wants to see it grow at ground level.
Organisations host one inside their own walls, to grow trust among their own people.
Both share the same nine steps, the same movements, the same visual system — and the same stance: notice before building, invite never instruct, measure by what continues after people go home.
The method made visible
Nine steps, nine marks, one grid
Each step carries its own mark, built from three primitives — circle, triangle, square — by cutting, rotating and combining. Colour marks the phase, not the step. The marks live on a grid of nine cells, three rows of three, one row per phase: separate pieces, drawn into a composition, on a grid that holds them together. The brand’s own logic, and the festival’s.
Orientation
1 Listen
Discover the need.
2 Gather
Form the core group.
3 Align
Clarify purpose and vision.
Doing
4 Connect
Build partnerships.
5 Design
Shape the festival journey.
6 Invite
Bring the community together.
Culmination
7 Host
Facilitate meaningful encounters.
8 Harvest
Capture stories and learning.
9 Grow
Sustain the web of trust.
The organisation
Solidarity Lab, partner of soul.com
Festival of Trust is an initiative of Solidarity Lab B.V. (Rotterdam, the Netherlands), partner of soul.com.