Trust is the work

There are moments when the world feels so unsettled that even those of us who have spent our lives building community stop and ask ourselves the pervasive question: Am I doing enough?

I have asked myself that question more than once, as seismic shifts – swift and unrelenting – have unsettled much of what we once assumed was steady. Like many of you, I have felt the disorientation and the urgency, a shared agita that insists we not retreat, but rise with clarity and purpose. The pace of polarisation, the erosion of trust across lines of difference, and the sense that our shared humanity is slipping further out of reach – these are not abstract conditions. They show up in our communities, our institutions and in the quiet conversations we have with one another – simultaneously bracing ourselves and readying ourselves for what comes next.

And yet, when more than 3,000 artists, presenters, producers, agents, policymakers and advocates gathered in New York this past January for APAP|NYC to identify business and exchange opportunities, something else was also unmistakably present: a formidable desire to connect with one another, to listen and to find the fulcrum, to leverage our strength, to move forward in spite of the moment we find ourselves in.

What I saw at conference was not a field in retreat. I saw arts professionals arriving with urgency, ready to name the moment we are in and to claim our role within it.

Recent studies help explain why that matters. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer¹ finds that grievance has hardened into insularity, with majorities now unwilling to trust people who do not share their views. At the same time, people are increasingly relying on proximate, lived-experience messengers and local institutions – places they know, recognise and return to – to help them navigate questions of safety, health and social change.

This is where we, the live arts, come into focus. We provide those experiences; we offer that communal space.

National arts research, including studies such as WEMaking: How Arts & Culture Unite People to Work Toward a Shared Future,² shows that place-based arts and cultural strategies build social cohesion through four interlocking conditions: relationships, belonging, orientation to the common good, and willingness to participate. Trust is the connective tissue. Without it, none of the others hold.

What the research confirms is what arts professionals already practise every day. Performing arts spaces are among the few places where people still gather across differences, not to debate, but to experience something together. They are places where feeling is not a liability, but a shared language. Where complexity is allowed. Where people are invited to sit with discomfort, beauty, contradiction and possibility – without being told what to think. In a moment when many systems feel brittle and brutal, that capacity matters.

At this year’s APAP|NYC, this understanding surfaced repeatedly – not performative but embodied and practised daily. Artists spoke candidly about courage, creative freedom and the cost of silence. Policy leaders and advocates shared tools for navigating political pressure while remaining grounded in values. Sessions on arts and health, civic dialogue and community wellbeing underscored that participation in the arts does more than entertain – it reduces fear, increases civic engagement and strengthens the local social fabric that democracy depends on.

Perhaps most importantly, we staked our claim as a field that is no longer content to defend its relevance reactively. Instead, we are sharpening our strategy, reclaiming our narrative, and recognising that the question is not whether the arts are essential, but whether we are willing to fully own that essentiality.

For too long, the performing arts have been treated as adjacent to the work of democracy, public health and social cohesion. But trust does not materialise through policy alone. It is built in rooms, venues and festival spaces. Over time. Through shared experience. Through practices that help people feel again, especially when feeling has become risky or repressed.

The arts are uniquely positioned as local trust brokers at a time when trust itself has become scarce. That is not self-serving to say; it is increasingly evident across disciplines – from public health to urban planning to philanthropy – that progress depends on the very conditions the arts help sustain.

What I left conference believing more strongly than ever is this: the performing arts field is not waiting to be rescued. We are actively shaping the civic capacity our communities need right now. And the more clearly we name that role – grounded in evidence, practice and lived experience – the more powerfully we can build on it and extend the invitation for all to join us.

Trust is not a side benefit of what we do.

It is the work.

And in this moment, that work could not be more necessary.