Glastonbury Festival, formally referred to as Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto, is famous as a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts held in Pilton, Somerset, England. Besides presenting contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, circus, cabaret, comedy, theatre, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists attend it, alongside others appearing on smaller stages.
Glastonbury Festival, or Pilton Pop, Folk & Blues Festival, started in 1970 when organizer Michael Eavis decided to host his festival at Worthy Farm after. The open-air festival he recently attended had inspired him.
The planning
In 2000 local villager Bill Burroughs created and constructed a new Pyramid Stage. 30-meter tall steel structure covered a footprint of 1,600 square meters, serving as infrastructure and framework for staging and festival performances.
Glastonbury Festival has been a (mainly) annual fixture since 1970. The iconic festival is back again.
If Glastonbury Festival was a city, the 210,000 attendees would make it the 27th-biggest in the country. There are over 100 different stages in over 30 areas, including over 3,300 toilets.
Sally Howell said to Betway online casino that it’s almost an all-year-round job. She has organized the Croissant Neuf field at Glastonbury Festival for 36 years. Agents constantly send through CDs and emails. They are recruiting staff, exhibits, and crews. With crew(site crew, stage and sound crew, tent crew), venue stewards, campsite stewards, around-the-clock stewards, and gate staff, the team consists of 175 people.
It fosters a sense of togetherness in the Croissant Neuf field.
Significance of Croissant Neuf field
The Croissant Neuf field at Glastonbury Festival is the longest standing, launched in 1986. It includes the Croissant Neuf tent. Its significance lies in the fact that the main acts play there. There’s a bandstand where musicians play during the changeovers. It has the main tent, a café, a dozen exhibits, and stalls.
In addition to that, there’s a pond, a garden, and seating areas.
Nightlife area Block9, shaped like a metallic head, requires three months to build. Also, there’s a need for 100 tons of building materials.
The arrangements
Sally Howell stated that she would live on the site from Tuesday to the week before the festival starts. The crew starts arriving on Wednesday. Depending on the weather, the crew dismantles within two days. The team goes on site until about the Friday right after the completion of the festival.
Howell stated that they have never run out in all these years. The teams work out the figures. However, the weather sometimes turns out to be the biggest problem. Sally Howell and the sound engineer, who is her son, book the bands.
By the end of March, the mother-son duo book all the bands, and the closer it gets to the festival. They put in their best efforts to include all genres.
Radio 6 is helpful, networking with other stage managers. One debut Howell gave was to an undiscovered 19-year-old in 2011, Ed Sheeran.
Construction stage
The Pyramid Stage serves as the main stage at the Glastonbury Festival. Some famous and successful artists have performed there, including David Bowie, U2, Roger Waters, Paul McCartney, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, and more.
- First Pyramid Stage
Theatre designer Bill Harkin designed the first Pyramid Stage with initial sketches after waking from a dream. In addition to that, he developed a cardboard model for the festival organizers. Harkin consulted a professor of architecture, Keith Critchlow, to serve as an expert in sacred architecture and geometry. Harkin developed a workable modular building block as a plan for the Pyramid Stage on a 3×3 grid. Harkin and his crew built the stage. In the method, they involved scaffolding, expanded metal, and plastic sheeting.
A modular scaffolding system called Kwikform helped them build subframe and towers. The audience had to start fixing the sheets to the scaffold with wire.
Dr. John Dee’s ‘Monad’ determined the unusual height of the stage. It eradicated the need for a security barrier across the front.
- Second Pyramid Stage
In 1981, the authority came up with a decision to build a permanent structure; to serve as a cowshed and animal food store. Old telegraph poles and surplus box section iron sheets helped build the stage structure.
- Third Pyramid Stage
The 2000 festival marked the creation of a new Pyramid Stage. Bill Burroughs designed it. The steel structure is 30 m tall, with 4 km of steel tubing.
Final words
The setup for the entire festival takes a notable amount of time. The crews allocated with the special tasks ensure that the necessities are met up.