Glastonbury Festival: An Unforgettable Learning Experience
Glastonbury Festival is more than just a music event; it's a multifaceted experience that offers valuable lessons in adaptability, community, and self-discovery. For those contemplating attending, especially those with anxieties or uncertainties, embracing the experience can lead to unexpected joy and personal growth.
A Leap of Faith: From Anxiety to Anticipation
The idea of attending Glastonbury had lingered for years. The excitement built in the months that followed, but so did the anxiety. Concerns about the lack of showers, sleep deprivation, and the overall chaos were very real. However, overcoming the initial apprehension proved to be incredibly rewarding, leading to one of the most unforgettable, joyful, and life-affirming experiences.
The Initial Hurdle: Arrival and Perseverance
The journey to Glastonbury began early, leaving at 4 am to arrive at Worthy Farm by opening time. The six-hour queue was long, hot, and exhausting, leading to sunburn before even entering the festival. Despite the initial hardship, it was merely a small bump in the road at the start of what became an unforgettable adventure. The cheery volunteers and happy festival-goers created a magical sight, and the atmosphere was already electric even before the music started.
Settling In: Embracing the Chaos
Once inside and settled, Glastonbury began to work its magic. The sheer scale of the place is hard to wrap your head around at first. It felt like a city built entirely for joy, with music and madness spilling out of every corner. Spending the Wednesday evening on the hill at Worthy View, watching the darkness gradually descend over the farm and the lights start to glisten was magical. The festival felt like a city built entirely for joy, with music and madness spilling out of every corner.
Musical Highlights: A Diverse and Immersive Experience
The musical lineup was diverse, with both anticipated performances and unexpected discoveries. The 'Primary School Bangers' set was hilarious and pure, nostalgic joy, while other acts brought their unique energy to the stage. The incredible Glastonbury app made seeing all these acts easy. Simply mark your favourites, and the app uses their set times and locations to create you a customised timetable to follow throughout the week. The feeling of being shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, dancing in a field with friends as the sun set (or rain fell), made live music feel more magical than ever.
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Overcoming FOMO: Embracing the Moment
One of the biggest challenges was the feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out). With so much happening at all times, it's impossible to see everything. The clashes in the line-up will break your heart; you’ll plan to see a certain act and then realise it’s on the other side of the site and you’ll miss half the set. Or you’ll just be too tired. Or distracted by something else. As someone who wants to experience just about everything, FOMO was a struggle. Letting go of the idea that things will run perfectly and embracing the chaos is essential.
Practical Lessons: Preparation and Comfort
Several practical lessons were learned during the festival. It's crucial to only take what you can comfortably carry, as getting to your camping spot can be a serious trek. The site is HUGE, and unforgiving. Being prepared for any weather is also essential, with a good waterproof, layers, comfortable shoes, and sun cream. Comfort should always be prioritized over style, as you'll be walking miles every day across various terrains.
Adapting to Discomfort: Showers, Sleep, and Sanitation
One of the biggest challenges was the lack of proper rest. Sleep is limited, especially if you’re in a lively camping area (earplugs and an eye mask help!), and unless you’re in a campervan or an area near showers, you’re probably not getting a real wash all week. That said, you’d be surprised how quickly you adapt. Good company makes everything better. Glastonbury can be overwhelming, and having a solid, kind, flexible group around you makes all the difference.
The Importance of Community: Shared Experiences and Support
Good company makes everything better. Who you go with really matters. Glastonbury can be overwhelming, and having a solid, kind, flexible group around you makes all the difference. Camping next to friendly neighbors can also enhance the experience, with shared tips, stories, and reassurance.
Self-Discovery: Endurance, Adaptability, and Limits
Glastonbury is so much more than a performing arts festival, because with it comes a real test of endurance, adaptability, and attitude. The glorious weather we had made a huge difference, and I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed it quite so much if we’d been soaked and cold the whole time. The area we camped in - the family field - also played a big part in how comfortable and safe I felt. It was calmer, quieter, and more manageable.
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Glastonbury as a Microcosm: Values, Heritage, and Evolution
Glastonbury is like delving into another world for a long weekend: a world that’s less about who’s performing and more about the experience. Despite its growth and mammoth modern-day scale, Glastonbury has remained true to its founding beliefs. As impressive as that consistent commitment is, equally impressive is the festival’s ability to evolve with the times, to avoid stagnating and losing relevancy. Because Glastonbury is so synonymous with these clear-cut values and the heritage their consistency has built, its audience has a very clear concept of what they expect. As a result, for a brand to successfully activate in and around the site, they must show they can operate within those values, whilst helping and/or enhancing the experience. This is true of any festival, but especially so at Glastonbury, given its uniqueness.
Brand Activation: Enhancing the Festival Experience
Brands that partner with Glastonbury must align with the festival's values and enhance the overall experience. EE have been in partnership with the festival for 7 years. They have provided rechargeable battery packs for phones and ensuring there is good connectivity on site via the installation of temporary masts. This year, Co-op again created an on-site pop-up festival supermarket to provide food and camping essentials. With Sir Paul headlining Saturday night, it was interesting to see Linda McCartney Foods activating well onsite, with a food truck near the Pyramid Stage. The truck sold a variety of menu options, which helps to showcase the variety of the Linda McCartney’s range.
Charitable Connections: Greenpeace, Oxfam, and WaterAid
Glastonbury has long been associated with three charities - Greenpeace, Oxfam and WaterAid. There activations educate an engaged audience in a compelling way. For example, WaterAid use their presence to help provide the audience with vital water, sanitation and hygiene services on site, be that providing free water refills or the Loo Crew looking after the 2,500 toilets on site. As such, Glastonbury becomes the ultimate proving ground for brands to make a connection with consumers.
A Family Affair: Education and Inspiration
Glastonbury is entwined in my family’s history: both my parents have been involved in the festival for many years - even my Grandfather has performed there as a Morris man! I have been visiting Glastonbury since I was three years old and I see visiting Glastonbury festival as a complete learning experience. It might appear difficult to reconcile a visit to the biggest green field festival in the world with the school curriculum but by looking at the festival from an educational perspective it will be clear that there are lots of ways I learn while I’m there, and which help me to have a more rounded view of the wider world. When I get to Glastonbury I will be based in the Kidz Field which is actually one of the biggest children’s festivals in Europe.
Educational Opportunities in the Kidz Field
As it is the world’s largest contemporary arts festival there are lots of opportunities to see a wide range of theatre, music and art. I intend to practise my critical writing skills to produce a young persons review of the festival. The Kidz Field in particular has lots of inspiration for creative writing in the story telling tent where I can hear traditional folk tales from around the world.
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The numbers involved in the festival are really amazing!
This year I will learn about the festival’s history and the history of the land that it is held on. Glastonbury Festival is held on Worthy Farm in the Vale of Avalon, Somerset.
The Kidz Field has some of the UK’s best touring children’s theatre shows and all of them are of a really high standard. I will watch the shows very carefully and try to see how the plays are put together and try to find out what makes them work dramatically.
There are many different ‘alternative’ cultures and religions at Glastonbury and it is almost impossible to come across these in everyday life in our small Cambridgeshire village. This is a rare opportunity to actually find out for myself about religions that are not normally talked about.
The area around Worthy Farm is very interesting geographically.
If you only ever saw Glastonbury on TV you might think that it was just a pop music festival. However, there are lots of stages that never get on to the TV, and there are so many different styles of music at Glastonbury. Going to Glastonbury is a fantastic opportunity to see the different types of music and their characteristics. The Kidz Field has a tent where there are free music lessons all day! Last year I had my first guitar lesson and I was given a guitar at the end of the festival because I had learnt so much.
There is a lot of high quality public art scattered over the site. The Kidz Field has a massive Make and Do tent and artists run workshops all day every day. Every year they also make a big carnival sculpture over the whole three days, and I will be able to join in.
There are a lot of dance shows which I can watch, circus skills workshops to take part in, organised group games to play with the Woodcraft Folk, trampolines to jump on, a flying fox run and most important of all I will be doing lots and lots of walking.
I will be doing a lot of cooking for myself and for other people so will be gaining experience and confidence by using camping stoves.
I will be one of the most experienced children on the Kidz Field this year and I will be using my people skills to look out for children who need some help.
The Kidz Field: A Hub of Learning and Creativity
There are so many educational aspects to the Kidz Field. Rainbow Theatre stage performances of Shakespeare plays every year, where the majority of the cast is drawn from Kidz Field kidz. The Woodcraft Elders teach woodland skills and deliver Workshops that cover nature, animals, space, time and other natural and scientific topics. They use play and creativity to teach children about complex subjects in simple, understandable terms. Many of the performers and crew in the Kidz Field are professionals who work in education, child services and other related areas in their day to day lives. We have several areas where kidz can learn Circus Skills, be given music lessons, which often culminate with instrument giveaways so that they can take their learning on and develop their musical skills after the festival.
In our Make and Do Marquee we have countless Arts & Crafts workshops and sessions, delivered by Artists and makers with years of experience and the knowledge and patience to pass their skills on to keen new artists. Many of children return year after year to pick up where they left of and extend their skills and techniques. We offer practical lessons in Carpentry, Mosaicry, puppet making, animation and filmaking.
Glastonbury's Painted Bins: A Collective Art Residency
As you step through the gates of Glastonbury Festival, you are immediately struck by its sheer magnitude. The air buzzes with a mixture of anticipation and the distant hum of music, while the fields stretch out before you, dotted with colorful tents and flags waving in the breeze. Festival-goers, dressed in eclectic outfits, create a vibrant tapestry as you make your way towards the stages, where the soundscape shifts and layers.
This year, the festival welcomed over 200,000 attendees, including 60,000 staff, to the fields of Worthy Farm in Somerset. With such a large crowd comes a significant amount of trash. Yet, in keeping with a tradition started by the founder in the 80s, the 17,000 trash bins at the event are not standard plastic bins, but 45-gallon oil drum bins, each individually hand-painted.
Through an unconventional collaborative residency, this enormous task is completed with no automated processes and logistics, relying solely on human creativity.
Originally, art residencies act as avenues to give artists physical workspaces along with fresh viewpoints to enhance their creative pursuits. The first artist-in-residence programs emerged around 1900 in the UK and the US, where art-loving benefactors offered guest studios to artists as a form of patronage.
At Glastonbury, getting people to paint 17,000 rubbish bins works like a collective art residency:
This process is carried out by two groups of painters. One team is made up of approximately ten professional paid artists living on the site, painting for ten long weeks. The other team of 80 volunteers live on-site for three weeks in exchange for their festival ticket.
“We paint together for eight hours a day everyday, but all you hear from this group is harmony and occasional explosive laughter… We celebrate and constructively critique each other's work”.
Roberta Ferraresi, a researcher at the University of Bologna, wrote an essay on the evolution of the art residency starting in Renaissance Europe. For her, a residency should:
- Be constituted as space and time other than everyday life;
- Be dedicated to artists' retreats, giving them opportunities for research and reflection;
- Invest in the dimension of encounter with the other and with otherness - that is, with the inhabitants of the territory in which it is located, with the clients and their projects, sometimes also with other resident artists, and more widely, in the comparison between different hopes, disciplines, languages and focus on aspects related to the exchange of experience, teaching and training;
- Materialize as a moment of shared life and work;
- Open up to the experimentation of ways of living, working, creating differently, and even propose new paths of research and roles of art in society.
Glastonbury, although it is originally a music and performing arts festival and not a collective art residency, ticks all these boxes. Glastonbury is not just a creative endeavor but also an effective learning experience. Here’s why:
Creating something tangible in a real-world setting offers a unique learning experience. Whatever it is you paint, it’s a tangible object that will serve a specific purpose. And even if it’s just keeping the festival’s fields clean, people will most likely see what you created, and that might spark inspiration, smiles, emotions… all very real things from the very real world.
The low-stakes nature of painting rubbish bins for the festival is a key factor in its effectiveness. As Jewelz, a veteran of the painting community, says, “There is a disposable nature to this art - it’ll be gone and painted over next year. This creates a freedom of expression; as artists, we are completely in the moment, before we move on to the next bin.” This approach allows artists to focus on the process rather than the outcome, encouraging experimentation and creative risk-taking.
Imagine having the freedom to experiment without the fear of failure, outside expectations, or any negative consequence, really. It’s quite liberating. Hannah, one of the professional artists at Glastonbury, highlights the importance of repetition in learning. She decorates up to ten oil drums a day, balancing quick, less detailed pieces with a few more intricate ones. This method of “quick-bins” and “longer-bins” ensures a blend of efficiency and creativity, helping artists hone their skills through varied practice.
Repetition might seem monotonous, but it’s the backbone of mastery. It’s like practicing scales on a piano or running the same route every morning. Each time, you get a little better, a little more confident, and eventually, it becomes second nature.
To me, the most interesting aspect of a learning experience like this is the combination between the three features: low-stakes and high-stakes learning through repetition. It’s low stakes because there are no strict guidelines or rules. Your work is not going to get harshly judged. You won’t lose anything for trying.
It’s high stakes because you’re creating something palpable and real.
It’s good work because you’re doing it repeatedly, like training a muscle. This mix of low-stakes creating, real-world impact and practice or repetition creates an environment where learning thrives. Just like the festival itself, Glastonbury’s painted bins is a living, breathing experiment in creativity and collaboration.
Have you experienced the feeling of seeing your work out there in the world? Glastonbury gives artists that feeling tenfold. It’s a reminder that learning can be orchestrated to have a tangible impact for both creators and spectators. Next time you find yourself in the midst of a massive creative project, take a page from Glastonbury’s book. Here are a few questions to help you turn a simple project into a collective creative endeavor:
- How can you create a space that encourages experimentation and collaboration?
- Who can you invite to join you in this creative journey?
- How will you showcase the final creations?
Glastonbury: A Festival of Learning
The mix of low-stakes creating, real-world impact and practice/repetition creates an environment where learning thrives.
Glastonbury is more than just a music festival; it's a unique learning environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and personal growth. Whether it's through artistic expression, community engagement, or simply navigating the challenges of festival life, Glastonbury offers valuable lessons that extend far beyond the realm of music.
Glastonbury: A Town with a History
When you hear the word ‘Glastonbury’ you might think back to the memorable gigs of The Rolling Stones (2013), Beyoncé (2011) or Johnny Cash (1994), but there’s another lesser known side to the Somerset town too. Did you know, for example, that Glastonbury is thought to have been an ancient celtic centre of goddess worship?
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