Glastonbury Festival!!

History of Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival is actually held on Michael Eavis's land at Pilton which is nearer Shepton Mallet to the north east of Glastonbury. The Festival started life as the Pilton Festival in 1970 after Eavis was inspired to hold his own festival after attending the Blues Festival at the Bath and West Showground. At that time the audience numbered 1,500 whereas it has mushroomed over the years to recent figures of 177,500 ticket holders! From its outset the Festival's ethos was steeped in hippie and spiritual beliefs that go hand in hand with Glastonbury being a mythological centre in the Vale of Avalon.

There has always been a "green" living and campaigning focus to the event and this has not changed, although it is much more high profile now. The organisers of the Glastonbury Festival support Oxfam, Greenpeace and Wateraid, and the Festival is also seen as a positive force for local and international change. In 2005 Michael Eavis and Bob Geldof highlighted the "Make Poverty History" campaign on stage and 1,350,000 was raised for charities and good causes.

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Glastonbury Festival - Live Music Festival

Not only has the Festival aimed to draw in big name bands such as David Bowie, Oasis, PJ Harvey, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Muse, Coldplay as well as some surprises over the years like Rolf Harris, Paul McCartney and Johnny Cash in 1994, but it's had the reputation of breaking up and coming acts. More recently the Unsigned Performer's Competition was launched and is held every year to give unsigned acts an opportunity to play on major stages. It's not all contemporary music though the multitude of stages also showcases dance, comedy, theatre, circus and cabaret acts. .

There are multitude of stages and tents like the Acoustic Tent, Dance Village, JazzWorld Stage, and Kidz Field which are self explanatory as well as the John Peel Stage that showcases new and established bands performing new or different material and the Other Stage which is round the back of the Pyramid Stage where big name bands also perform. The Pyramid Stage is the iconic focal point for Glasto and where the headlining bands play. It has had several forms over the years since it first appeared in 1971. Other tents and spaces are themed for folk and roots acts, poetry and prose, artistic activities and Left Field, the political conscience of the Festival, where you can debate issues, find out what action you can take and find out more about the ethics promoted by the Festival. The Green area is where you'll find all sorts of complementary and alternative medicines and demonstrations of environmentally friendly technologies

Glastonbury Festival's image has been dogged by huge numbers of people crashing the festival and of course the effects of the British weather on thousands of campers in fields that invariably turn to mud rivers in the rain! Security fencing has now been installed which has drastically cut down the numbers of people able to crash the event. There has been criticism that Glastonbury Festival has become increasingly commercialised over the years which it acknowledges by clustering the more commercial aspects around the Pyramid, Other and Dane stages and theming areas through to the Field of Avalon and Green Fields which retain the alternative and spiritual aspects from which the Festival originated. Being more commercial has meant that more profit has been made which is put into improving facilities on site and donating to humanitarian causes.

As for the weather, there's not much that can be done about it, but the annual sight of mud-caked festival-goers happily sploshing their way round show how the Festival atmosphere overcomes minor discomfort. The best advice is to go prepared for all weathers and layer up! Check the weblinks right for weather for Glastonbury nearer the time.

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Glastonbury Festival Tickets and Accommodation

Check the weblinks right for more information on the festival and contact numbers for tickets. It is invariably held in June around the Summer Solstice and as you can imagine with thousands of people travelling to the event roads can become clogged and despite the vast majority of festival-goers camping, holiday accommodation is also likely to be booked up. Camping areas are provided at different points around the Festival site and you can aim to camp in areas near the stages that interest you. There is a family friendly area, Cockmill Medow, which is aimed at being quieter and has improved lighting, is security fenced and monitored 24 hours a day. If you really do need a good night's sleep, the quieter camping areas are further away from the stages!

The Glastonbury Festival website has lots of information on how to get to and from the Festival with particular advice on how to manage it in as eco-friendly way as possible. Given traffic problems biking it, getting trains and buses is often a lot easier that sitting in your car, and you get to meet fellow Festivalers.

Tickets go on sale in Spring in the year of the Festival. You can only buy weekend tickets unless you are a local resident who can attend on a day ticket on the Sunday. You have to be registered with the Festival before you can buy tickets. Tickets are sold online at See Tickets, link right. Or you can buy them through the Telephone Ticket Line, but will not be sold from any other telephone number listed for the Festival.

Check the Glastonbury Festival website, link right, for up-to-date ticket release dates and contact numbers.

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