Trust as infrastructure: How events can build safety cultures that protect and differentiate 

After international research and through developing a safety platform for crowded places, Gracie Broom says that trust is not a soft, secondary concern, adding: “The assumption that information from the public is unreliable, and not worth building around, is worth revisiting. When reporting is difficult, hidden or slow, of course it goes unused.” Here, she describes an elegant, simple solution


Image by tampatra | Magnific

Time and again, reviews of major crowd incidents reveal the same pattern: The public noticed something was wrong long before that information reached anyone who could act upon it. The information was there; often what was missing was a simple, trusted way for it to get from the people who saw it to the people who needed to know.

This is not a technology problem. It is a design problem and, at its heart, a problem of trust. People will only report what they see if they believe two things: That it is easy to do and that something will happen as a result. Most venues build their safety operations around what their own staff can see, whether that’s stewards on the ground or cameras overhead. But no matter how many staff are on site, they can't see everything. Much of what's happening is only seen by the people in the crowd.


Gracie Broom at Cannes Lions in France for Reporti’s deployment | Photo: Gracie Broom

Having spent the last few years thinking about this gap, first through academic research across London, New York and Tokyo, and more recently by putting our platform, Reporti, into live environments, I have learned that trust is not a soft, secondary concern. It is the infrastructure that determines whether a safety system works at all.

Building the trust

Reporti lets people at an event report any concerns instantly to staff, without downloading an app or creating an account. They scan a QR code or follow a link, and their report reaches the venue team directly, where it can be triaged and responded to in seconds. Staff can message back to ask questions or help locate someone who needs support. It is deliberately simple, because friction discourages reporting.

This summer we protected more than 80,000 people across a range of events, from Cannes Lions in France to the London Craft Beer Festival and through a series of deployments at the Roundhouse in Camden, London. What struck me was how quickly trust compounds once it starts to build.

It starts with the first report. Someone notices an issue, sees the signage, and decides to try. That first report is really a test of two things people quietly worry about: Whether it will truly stay anonymous, and whether anyone is listening. When a response comes back in seconds, both questions are answered at once.

Our fastest report this summer reached the relevant team in 23 seconds, from the moment the person opened the form to it landing with staff. For context, an emergency call in the UK typically takes ten to 15 seconds simply to reach a human being. Speed like that tells the person reporting that they have been heard, and this changes how they think about reporting next time.



The Reporti sign at Cannes Lions, including a QR code for people to scan and report incidents | Photo: Gracie Broom

From there, usage spreads. We consistently found reports came from the areas where our signage was most prominent, which demonstrates something obvious, but often overlooked: A safety channel people cannot see might as well not exist. Visibility drives adoption, and adoption builds the shared awareness that lets teams respond earlier, when a situation is still small. At one deployment, an attendee messaged me after spotting our QR code to say how much it meant to see it in real life, having researched exactly this kind of problem for her own university project years earlier. That is trust in action.

Why this matters beyond safety

Something interesting happens when a venue makes its commitment to safety visible. It stops being a compliance exercise and becomes part of how people experience the event. At Cannes Lions, our signage sat within a wider safeguarding effort, and it was the safety provision, not the parties or the brand activations, that some attendees chose to talk about publicly afterwards. Safety, done visibly and well, becomes part of the brand.

It matters commercially, too. A venue known for looking after its people is more resilient and more competitive. Staff who trust that reports will be acted on escalate concerns earlier, and licensing authorities and insurers increasingly want to see a genuine culture of care rather than a box ticked. Attendees, too, remember where they felt safe and choose to come back.
 


Image: The Reporti sign at Cannes Lions | Gracie Broom

Looking ahead
The events I have described are seasonal, but the thinking is not. As we move towards winter light trails, Christmas markets and New Year gatherings, the same principle applies: Crowds gather in spaces where no team can watch everything at once, and the people within them are an underused source of early awareness. The same is true of transport hubs and public spaces, where local authorities are increasingly responsible for large numbers of people without the infrastructure of a dedicated venue.

As legislation, such as Martyn's Law in the UK, reshapes how organisations think about their duty of care, giving people a trusted way to speak up will become part of what ‘good’ looks like. The assumption that information from the public is unreliable, and not worth building around, is worth revisiting. When reporting is difficult, hidden or slow, of course it goes unused. Lower those barriers, make it easy and discreet, and prove that speaking up leads to action, and the public becomes one of the most valuable early-warning layers a venue or public space has. This is not wishful thinking; it is simply better design.

• For more information, visit Reporti.