Glastonbury Music Festival: Growth, Vision, Issues in Planning

This report delves into the Glastonbury Music Festival, examining its origins, growth, and the vision behind its creation. It highlights how the festival has evolved from a small gathering to a major event, attracting thousands of attendees and showcasing a diverse range of musical and artistic talent. The report analyzes the complexities arising from its increasing size, including environmental impact, crowd control, and security issues. It further discusses the legacy goals of the festival, emphasizing its commitment to supporting emerging artists and promoting social and environmental responsibility. The report concludes by addressing the challenges faced in planning and delivering the event, such as managing large crowds, ensuring security, and mitigating environmental concerns, while striving to maintain the festival's unique atmosphere and values. Desklib provides access to a wealth of similar assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: GLASTONBURY MUSIC FESTIVAL
GLASTONBURY MUSIC FESTIVAL
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
Why was it created?.........................................................................................................2
Size and growth of the event...........................................................................................2
Complexity of the event...................................................................................................4
Legacy goals....................................................................................................................4
Issues faced by the event.................................................................................................5
Crowed control problem..............................................................................................5
Security issues.............................................................................................................6
Resource recovery.......................................................................................................7
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................8
References............................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Glastonbury music festival is one of the greatest performing arts and music festival. It
can be considered as a template for almost all the festivals that have been introduced after it. The
major difference between other festivals and Glastonbury music festival is that it has all the best
parts of a good festival in a single astonishing bundle. For attending the event of Glastonbury, an
individual needs to involve a good amount of travelling and most probably a queue for getting in
but once all these hurdles are overcome, the individual enters into a huge city or a mini state that
is located under canvas (Ballantyne, Ballantyne & Packer, 2014). British rules apply in the event
as well but individuals are freer in this festival. Every individual is allowed to enjoy their wild
time in the way they want to. This assignment describes regarding the event in details, it further
discusses regarding the problems faced by the events as well.
Discussion
Why was it created?
Glastonbury music festival was introduced in order to provide various up and coming
artists a huge opportunity on radio, online and television. It has helped various artists to launch
their careers of acts like George Ezra, Jake Bugg, Florence, The Machine, Catfish, The
Bottlemen, Slaves, Rae Morris, James Bay, SOAK and many more (Gibson & Connell, 2016).
This platform had been a huge chance for artists to showcase their talent and win people’s hearts.
Size and growth of the event
Glastonbury Music Festival is an event of around five days. In thus event various artists
perform their arts contemporarily; it takes place in Pilton, Somerset. Along with contemporary

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music, the festival includes various events like dance, theater, comedy, cabaret, circus, and many
more arts (Croes & Lee, 2015). The leading rock as well as pop artist is usually in headlines,
along with thousands of artists who perform in smaller stages and various performance areas.
This event had first taken place on 19th September, 1970. The festival was actually called
a pop folk and blues festival at a working farm that takes place after the death of Jimi Hendrix.
The act actually included Keith Christians, Quintessence and Marc Bolan, there were overall
1500 attendants, the tickets were priced around 1 euro; the event also included free milk which
was provided from the farm. In 1981 the festival was finally named as Glastonbury festival and it
was held in the exact same location (Waroux, Saliba & Cottrell, 2016). The pyramid shaped
stage took around two months. The number of attendants was nearly 18,000 and the tickets were
priced at 8 Euros.
In the year of 1992, the amount collected from the profit made by the festival was
donated to a charity named Greenspace which backed the resurgence and revitalization of green
spaces and parks (Flinn & Frew, 2014). This year they had special guests for performing like
Tom Jones, DJ Harvey, Saw Doctors and The Levellers. The tickets were priced around 49 Euros
and the visitors were around 70,000.
In 2010, the festival celebrated its 40th anniversary; in this year a newly built reservoir
was presented which created million liters of water for the purpose of drinking. More number of
toilets and tapes were available for the attendees. For the special occasion, numerous acts were
performed for the first time (Fox, 2018). Various acts included Scissor Sisters, Kylie Minogue,
Mumford and sons and Shakira. Around 135,000 tickets were sold and 37,000 passes of crew,
stewards and perfrmers were sold. The Sunday tickets were price at 185 Euros.

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Complexity of the event
The main complexity of the event lies in the fact that the environmental impact caused by
Glastonbury causes various concerns even before attendees make it to the event. The festival has
been very inspiring for people, numerous individuals have engages into festival goers in order to
think regarding the impact of the events on the environment (Gemie, 2017). Around 80,000
people set up camps near the venue of the festival but most of the people would not think twice
before emitting dirty gases from the vehicles belonging to them. Huge level of electricity is used
in order to produce power the Glastonbury festival’s waste disposal. Bins usually overflow
before the first day is over. Disposal of that amount of rubbish might cost around 780,000 Euros.
Experts have agreed that the modes of transport to and from the festival are the major
cause of production in greenhouse gases. As a result not attending the festival and staying at
home is more preferred in order to balance the climate change (Hiller, 2016). The participants of
music festival offsets the carbon footprint that generates at the event because they use lesser
energy compared to the energy that they would if they had been stayed at their home and watch
their favorite music artists on television.
Legacy goals
The festival requires the visitors to carry numerous stuffs for their betterment and for
spending comfortable days in the festival premise (Hoksbergen & Insch, 2016).The equipments
that are requested to the visitors to own during the Glastonbury festival include the festival
ticket, reusable water bottle, tent, sleeping bag, a warm jumper, roll mat, sturdy boats or Wellies,
Sun tan lotion, waterproof, toiletries, enough pair of clothes in case they get wet, medication in

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case they required, medical info, ID, torch, hat, bags that would be required to store dirty clothes,
torch, money cards and some more necessary items that would be required by the visitors.
There are various means of transport that can be used in order to reach to the festival, the
means of transport include by train, by bus, by bike, by car, by caravan, by motorbike, car share
and by air. 70% of festival attendees agree that this festival causes huge traffic congestion (Holt,
2018). This represents that traffic is one of the major problems that should be overcome. People
usually travel to festival by their personal vehicles because public means of transport are usually
very crowded during those days and convincing people to travel through public transport is quite
difficult. Around 65% of visitors have strongly agreed that they would prefer to travel to the
festival by public transports if the fare of the tickets were included with the fare of festival.
Issues faced by the event
Along with rise in popularity, crowd, complexity and legacy goals of the event, it had
faced numerous issues with planning and delivery of the events, the issues are as follows
Crowed control problem
Crowds are not usually risks to safety of public, there are millions of individuals at big
crowd densities in the world cities almost every day, places were crowds usually stand have less
risks, the movement of crowds like swaying, running, walking and surging creates risk to the
safety to the people (Kuijken, Leenders & Wijnberg, 2016). At a high crowd density, the crowd’s
movement might generate forces that are enough to cause injuries as well as deaths in the crowd
crush, they might also collapse like Heysel and Hillsborough.
Usually there are a huge number of people who attend the Glastonbury music festival,
becausie the popularity of the festival has been growing every time. It is not possible to guess the

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exact number off crowd that would gather in the festival. It is a loss for the festival if they do not
have enough number of visitors as expected and in case the event gets visitors more than
expected, it becomes a nuisance for the festival (Laing & Mair, 2015). It becomes stressful for
the Glastonbury festival when it gets more visitors than expected. The crowd becomes
uncontrollable; here are huge queues for toilets, cloakrooms that tail round the specific block.
The huge crowd would create problem for various stalls present there as well because the stalls
have resources equal to the number of people who have attended the festival previously, now if
the crowd increases, the resources of the stalls get over and they face problems due to the crowd
and it creates nuisance for the people present there (Ballantyne, Ballantyne & Packer, 2014). The
event manager, event director and many more people related to the management of event along
with the visitors and participants face numerous problems if the crowd is much more than
planned or expected.
Security issues
Glastonbury festival is famous all over the world for its alternative vibe, peace loving and
its music festival but the town council and police have agreed that there is usually outbreak of
bad behavior and crimes in the festival, not everyone come with the intention of being nice to
other people or with clean intentions (Little, Burger & Croucher, 2018). Some of the residents
have generally said that during the festival they have been so worried that they have shun a
specific High Street sometimes while the visitors have reported taking various routes to reach to
the Glastonbury tor, the hill which is located above the city and some surrounding Somerset
Levels, for avoiding numerous trouble makers. The problem had become so acute that the
council of the town had to organize a public meeting for discussing solutions. A particular
attendant chief constable who belonged from Somerset police and Avon had also attended but

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the tension was so high that the officer had to help some of the junior professionals for defusing
a blazing row between two of the attendants (Vinnicombe & Sou, 2017). One of the attendants
had introduced herself as a specific “peacemaker” in that particular town.
Residents face numerous problems due to the festival, they have to deal with people who
are drunk and pass through the ways, they ask for money to the residents as well. Sometimes
people have seen visitors trying to peek into the houses or various shops located on road side
(Lund & Turris, 2015). This creates a huge amount of security risks because the visitors who try
to peek into shops or houses of residents might also end up stealing from these houses or shops.
Sometimes people are seen tearing decorations and hurting people when they are too excited to
see the popular stars or when the performance does not go well according to their expectations.
Sometimes people tend to open the lightings or sound systems connected in the event, these
intentions create security issues in the event. Apart from the music events, there are numerous
people who do not visit the festival because they are afraid of the mishaps that take place in the
festival. Most of the times, residents so do not go up to the streets after noon because they fear
that they would encounter drunk and ill behaved people.
Resource recovery
Infrastructure of waste management in most of the cities is built organically as the city
grows more but in case of a temporary city like Glastonbury that serves a population of around a
size of city for only five days, is quite tough. It requires a huge amount of preparation on the
staffs present in the farm (Mallette, George & Blum, 2018). There are individuals who are
provided the responsibility of the rubbish collected and recycling them after the festival. This is
done at the recovery barn where unfinished materials are recovered. This barn is three times the
size of the barn that is present nearby where recycling takes place. Previously recycling used to

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take place in a marquee that is located in the middle of the site but with the increase in the event,
the growth of event has resulted in growth of the rubbish produced from the event (Turris &
Lund, 2017). The process of waste management has evolved since 1500 hippies had partied in
the farm for around 2 days.
There are usually some blips on the way which included “The Reclamator” which is a
mobile conveyor belt which is powered by various solar panels and vacuum machines. These
belts are located for cleaning the entire site in just 2 days (Robertson, Yeoman & Smith, 2015).
This process was used previously, nowadays recycling is a huge operation which involves
hundreds of individuals belonging to the crew, and it also requires thousands of volunteers who
usually work three shifts, each consisting of eight hours. In these shifts they pick litter or stand
around the MRF’s line in the exchange of the tickets.
Conclusion
Glastonbury is one of the largest festivals in the field of music and many other arts in the
world. Around 175,000 people attend this festival every year. Due to the huge amount of crowd,
this festival requires exclusive infrastructure in the terms of transport, water, electricity supply
and security. Majority of staff are volunteers who help the festival in raising millions of crowd
for charity organizations. Glastonbury can be defined as an experience in cultural field because
around all of its attendees unite together, irrespective of their background or any alternative
subculture. This assignment discusses regarding the size and growth of the event, complexity of
the event and its legacy goals. It further discusses regarding various issues faced by the festival
in terms of crowd control, security issues and resource recovery issues.

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