Glastonbury Festival

In the UK there are festivals for every kind of music you can imagine, but the most famous festival of all is Glastonbury Festival.

What is Glastonbury Festival?

It's a huge festival that takes place at Worthy Farm, in the countryside near the town of Glastonbury in south-west England. It began in 1970 when Michael Eavis, a local farmer, organised a small music festival on his farm. Back then, tickets cost £1 and they included free milk from the farm! Today, the festival is run by Eavis's youngest daughter, Emily Eavis, and it has grown into a five-day festival with around 200,000 people attending. Tickets normally sell out minutes after going on sale, but if you can't get a ticket, you can still watch the performances live on television. The festival staff are volunteers, and every year it raises millions of pounds for charity.

What is the festival experience like?

The festival site is enormous, the size of over 500 football pitches. Festival-goers camp on the festival site and they can choose from different areas with different atmospheres. Some are quiet, some are lively and some are for families. The site has food stalls, bars, toilets, a medical centre, a church, a cinema, recycling facilities and much more. Glastonbury even has its own newspaper printed on the site!

What kind of music is there?

You can hear rock, pop, hip-hop and many other kinds of music. The biggest stage is called the Pyramid Stage, and that is where the most famous bands and singers play, which have included the Rolling Stones, Shakira, Beyoncé and Coldplay. On smaller stages you can see less famous artists. In total there are thousands of performances over the five days of the festival, on over a hundred stages. Apart from music, you can also see comedy, theatre and circus performances.

How about the festival's environmental impact?

Glastonbury promotes environmental protection. The festival site uses solar power, wind power and other renewable energies to reduce its environmental impact, and power generators on the site use fuel made from waste cooking oil. To reduce waste on the site, reusable or compostable plates and cups are used instead of plastic ones, and single-use plastic bottles aren't allowed. The festival even takes a break once every five or six years to let the land and local people recover from the huge festival.

How about the weather?

We can't talk about Glastonbury without talking about the weather. The festival is in June, but the weather is unpredictable, with rain and storms sometimes. People still have fun by splashing around in the water and mud!