A decade for culture.We already started.

In September 2026 the United Nations declared 2027 to 2036 the International Decade of Culture for Sustainable Development. The vote was 174 in favor, 1 against. UNESCO now leads the work of turning that ambition into policy and funding, across a hundred member states and counting.

Festival of Trust did not wait for that resolution. Trust grows in pockets, not policies. A shared meal. A story told well. A moment where a stranger becomes someone you would vouch for. We build festivals around that fact.

Social cohesion is one of the outcomes UNESCO names for this Decade, alongside education, climate action and peace. But cohesion is not something a policy produces on its own. It is what trust looks like once enough of it has grown in one place. A community with no pockets of trust does not become cohesive because a framework says it should. It becomes cohesive because people already know who they can rely on, and that knowledge spreads.

But the timing is not nothing. UNESCO’s own figures put cultural and creative industries at 3.39% of global GDP and 3.55% of jobs worldwide. The Pact for the Future and the Sevilla Commitment both name culture as something worth funding directly, not as decoration around other goals.

If you are considering a Festival of Trust for your community or organisation, you are not backing something niche. You are backing the kind of work the entire UN General Assembly just agreed belongs at the center, for the next ten years.