“Sing along with the Common People”: Glastonbury and the Future of Festivals in the Age of Corona

Festivals, perhaps especially Glastonbury, have always been sites of community, celebration, exploration of the self in relation to others, transgression, and joy. Started by Somerset dairy farmer Michael Eavis in 1970, Glastonbury Festival has evolved and expanded exponentially over 50 years, from a small-scale gathering of 2500 ticket buyers paying £1 (and getting a free pint of milk from the Worthy Farm cows) to the world’s largest greenfield music and performing arts festival with 203,500 attendees paying £248 for tickets in 2019. Now best known for its spectacular roster of musical acts, its iconic pyramid stage, and the bands that have graced it, the festival has from its inception focused on arts and atmosphere beyond music. As promotional materials for Glastonbury Festival 1971 highlight, the festival was always conceptualized as more than just a gig in a field, described instead as “a fair in the medieval tradition, embodying the legends of the area, with music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights and opportunity for spontaneous entertainments.” For many revelers, the weekend of Summer Solstice has become synonymous with Glastonbury Festival and its transcendent potential. The image of collective transformation has been associated with Glastonbury since the festival’s first appearance on film, Glastonbury Fayre (1972). As Chris Anderton notes, the documentary offers a selective account of the festival, projecting the image of a utopia with “the potential of a new way to live, of a spiritual search for meaning, that harks back to an imagined world of pre-industrial paganism and agrarianism.”