There is arguably no outdoor music festival more iconic than Glastonbury, annually bringing hundreds of thousands of people from across the world together for one weekend-long party. Over the years, the UK's biggest outdoor music festival has achieved legendary status, largely thanks to the sheer amount of music fans who have taken to Somerset's Worthy Farm to watch some of the biggest names in the music industry perform.
This year's event has been met with masses of excitement following a two-year break due to organisers enforcing two consecutive fallow years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Up to 200,000 people are set to descend onto the site to enjoy all the iconic festival has to offer.
But what exactly does the long-running festival celebrate and what are its objectives?
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According to the official Glastonbury Festival website, it aims to "encourage and stimulate youth culture from around the world in all its forms, including pop music, dance music, jazz, folk music, fringe theatre, drama, mime, circus, cinema, poetry and all the creative forms of art and design, including painting, sculpture and textile art".
A large area of the Festival (the “green” area) is set aside for complementary and alternative medicine, demonstrations and displays of environmentally-friendly technologies and techniques, various forms of religious expression, and a forum for debating environmental, social and moral issues. The festival also organises market places that sell an enormous range of wares, and place particular emphasis on offering high quality prepared food and hand-made goods, including clothes and jewellery. The company makes films and recordings of the event too, which are sold all over the world.
Reducing the impact that the festival has on the local area, and the planet, has always been a core value for organisers. On top of the advice they give to festival goers, Glastonbury Festival also supports a number of organisations including Greenpeace, Oxfam, and WaterAid.
Michael Eavis, who created the Festival, said: "The company actively pursues the objective of making a profit. And in so doing is able not only to make improvements to the site, but also to distribute large amounts of money to Greenpeace, Oxfam, Water Aid and other humanitarian causes which enhance the fabric of our society. In the running of the event the Festival deliberately employs the services of these organisations, increasing the amounts they can raise towards their objectives."
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