Over the past six months, we have been busy working away making a new half-hour documentary called ‘The Trust Crisis’.
This fascinating new film is all about whether declining trust in politics and government may be the most threatening crisis we face today. And whether the implementation and very concept of democracy is at threat globally.
We’re working together with The TrustGov Project – a group of academics based out of Southampton University – to research what drives political trust, why it is so low in many major countries at the moment and what the repercussions of low trust are on society and our daily lives.
We travel to three countries around the world to compare trust levels: the US, the UK and Denmark.
Shockingly, in the US, only 14% of citizens trust the government! We wanted to find out why this was and what the effect is on US society.
Denmark, on the other hand (like many Scandinavian countries), is a country with strong and stable levels of political trust. Could this be down to the strong welfare state and homogeneity of society? But what are the repercussions of being a monoculture on inclusivity and immigration policy? Would we even want to have really high levels of trust?
The UK is more in the middle – we travel around the country to explore what people think of politicians here and why.
We ask what the best level of trust vs. criticism to have as citizens is in relation to politicians and where the solutions to the crisis might lie.
What a challenge it has been to make this, filming remotely in a range of countries around the world during a pandemic.. But we’ve loved every minute and hopefully you’ll love the result.
Watch this space – our new film will be out and available to watch online soon!
