Glastonbury Festival
Every summer, music lovers get excited about the UK's biggest
music festival! Find out all about it in this article.
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!
Different areas with different atmospheres
Food stalls, bars, medical centre,...
Own newspaper
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!
1. Monday: 20oC
2. Tuesday: 20oC
3. Wednesday: 16oC
4. Thursday: 17oC
5. Friday: 18oC
6. Saturday: 18oC
7. Sunday: 21oC
Festival
Glastonbury Festival.......................................................................................................................1
What is Glastonbury Festival?..........................................................................................................1
What is the festival experience like?.............................................................................................2
What kind of music is there?.........................................................................................................2
How about the festival's environmental impact?..................................................................2
How about the weather?....................................................................................................................3