BLB10082-1 & BLB10145-2
Management in Organisations
The Glastonbury Festival
Introduction
Every summer thousands of people flock to music festivals all over the UK, Europe and the USA. One of the most established is the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1995.
The first festival was held at a farm in the village of Pilton in Somerset in the UK in September 1970. Fifteen hundred people attended paying £1 for the weekend event, which included Marc Bolan as the headline act, and free milk from the farm. The festival was organised by the farm owners, Michael and Jean Eavis, who had been inspired to have a go themselves after visiting the Bath Blues Festival earlier in the year.
The festival is now a large-scale event with over 1000 acts on 17 stages. It is held (more or less annually) on the midsummer weekend in June, at the same farm. Michael leads the organisation, with Jean’s support. In 1995, 80,000 people attended. Festival dates and attendances are shown in the table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Festivals and attendance figures.
Festival Year / Attendance / Festival Year / Attendance1970 / 1500 / 1986 / 40000
1971 / 12000 / 1987 / 40000
1979 / 12000 / 1989 / 50000
1981 / 18000 / 1990 / 65000
1982 / 25000 / 1992 / 70000
1983 / 30000 / 1993 / 80000
1984 / 35000 / 1994 / 80000
1985 / 40000 / 1995 / 80000
Source Western Daily Press 22.06.95
The Festival Site
A map of the festival site is shown in Fig 3.1. Around 189 hectares in area, the site comprises the Eavis’s own farmland and that of three neighbouring farms rented for the duration. The main areas of the site are car parks, camp sites (fields set aside for tents), the stages and entertainment venues, an area of market stalls and the ‘green field’ site, which holds a number of stalls, displays and exhibits to promote environmental and spiritual awareness (the town of Glastonbury itself, about six miles away, is the subject of many mystical and mythical traditions).
As the festival site is empty farmland, the festival infrastructure has to be built from nothing every year. A number of structures are built or brought in which literally turn the site into a self sufficient ‘town’ for the duration of the festival. Roads have to be re laid, bridges and pipes are installed, fences erected and caravans, portakabins, marquees and toilet blocks added. A number of utility and personnel services are also required to support the site – electricity, water, telephone cabling, catering, security, police, first aid, welfare, stewards, litter pickers and so on.
Planning the Festival
Understandably, an enormous amount of organisation is required behind the scenes in the months leading up to the festival. A team of around twelve people, led by Michael Eavis, carries out the main organisation. The site is split into geographical areas and delegated to a number of co-ordinators who are largely responsible for the organisation of these areas, although Michael takes a close personal interest in all of the events planned. Two site managers supervise the site layout, contracts and construction. In addition a number of contractors take on the organisation, construction and running of the services needed on site before, during and after the festival. These are shown in table 3.2. The contractors are usually specialist companies who deal with large events such as Glastonbury, many of whom have been involved for a number of years. The area co-ordinators are volunteers with ‘other jobs’ who work on Glastonbury in their spare time for enjoyment and are generally paid a modest amount. They are either involved in similar work or do something completely different, like teaching. Most have been involved in the festival for a number of years, many from the start, and have a detailed inside knowledge of what is required.
Preparation for the festival begins in the preceding December with a licence application to the local district council. This licence lays down the standards that the festival must meet regarding the site plan, vehicles and roadways, attendance and tickets, sanitary facilities, site security and safety, health and safety, emergency co-ordination and site communication, noise and food hygiene. Failure to comply with these restrictions will result in prosecution.
Table 3.2 Co-ordinators and contractors
Area co-ordinators / Contracted ServicesTheatre & Circus / Communications
Pyramid Stage (main stage) / Site Information
NME (New Musical Express) Stage / Staff catering
Jazz and World Music Stage / Green litter
Acoustic Stage / Rubbish & hygiene
Cinema / Medical
Kid’s area / Welfare
Dance tent / Stewarding
Market manager / Car parking
Green markets / Gate & traffic
Green fields / Fencing
Site management / Water
Electricity
Security
Police
Toilets
Fire
Stage construction
Sound & PA
Lighting
TV & radio broadcasting
In January, with the festival officially announced, the contractors and co-ordinators meet with Michael to discuss the plans for the festival. Each organiser is delegated their specific area and a budget and their requirements are discussed. Then from January to March, the market traders are booked, dealing directly with the farm. The booking of bands and acts is an ongoing process and is liable to change right up to the last minute but it is preferable that bookings are confirmed as early as possible. Due to the sheer popularity of the festival, however, it is not difficult to find bands or replacements- often they approach Michael directly.
As the weeks pass, further meetings and discussions take place until six weeks beforehand, when the co-ordinators start working full time on the festival. On 1 June the various contractors move on site and begin construction. From this point on work is monitored very closely - in the past some stages have had to be moved because they were built in the wrong place! This part of the organisation presents its own challenges, such as providing accommodation, catering, power and water for the crews – who are resident up to, during and after the festival – constructing, monitoring and dismantling equipment.
Running the Festival
The weekend of the festival finally arrives. The main events take place from the Friday to the Sunday evening, but the campsite opens on the preceding Wednesday morning and closes on Monday.
The quotations below describe some of the experiences of 1995 festivalgoers:
‘Arriving on the Thursday before the festival, we were amongst the first to pitch tents, I didn’t realise quite how much that mattered until the Saturday morning, by which time people were fitting tents into gaps barely big enough for the pegs! From the upper perimeter of the site you can see a sea of red, orange, green and blue stretching out before you. An awe inspiring sight!’
‘I was surprised at how crowded the festival can get! I remember being caught in a bottleneck of people trying to cross a bridge over a stream from one field to another. I felt almost as though I could have picked up my feet and still been carried along! The crowd is rarely so bad, but if there are two or more unpopular acts several thousand people suddenly want to be elsewhere.’
Each contractor has on call crews to monitor the festival and react to problems. These naturally depend on the service itself. Two prime examples are electricity and water:
· Electricity. A number of diesel generators are installed around the site that need refuelling twice a day. A refuelling circuit around all the generators takes 12 hours to complete. The generators will use around 40,000 litres of diesel fuel in four days.
· Water. The festival requires nearly four million litres of water over five days. This is used for standpipes and for catering purposes. There are virtually no flush toilets on the Glastonbury site. The water cannot be drawn from mains sources that are designed for the local village only, so it is transported in milk tankers holding 7500 – 20000 litres from a reservoir seven miles away. These run for 24 hours a day from two days before the festival to the Monday after the festival closes.
There is a 100,000 litre storage facility at the farm which is continuously replenished by the tankers and there are 5 tankers on the site at various locations, each holding 20,000 litres. These tankers are monitored closely and refilled as required. This supply of water is then distributed throughout the site by a 15-kilometre network of temporary pipes. Seven pumps are used at peak times to pump water throughout the pipe network.
The water itself has to be treated with chlorine and is monitored by Council Environmental Health Officers to ensure that it meets the standard required.
Other organisations, such as emergency services and stewards need to be able to react to situations quickly, as demonstrated by the report of a 1994 festival-goer:
“In 1994 somebody was shot in a field. The speed at which it was dealt with was impressive. The Police and Ambulance had the place sealed off in minutes.”
In 1994, 476 people were employed directly by Glastonbury Festivals Ltd. The breakdown of areas where they were employed is shown in Table 3.3. This list does not include subcontractors or voluntary workers. For example 600 volunteers worked as stewards (organised by Oxfam Campaigns) during the 1995 festival.
Table 3.3 Direct Employment – 1994
Area / NumberLitter Pickers / 343
Theatre / 35
Site / 28
Jazz Stage / 23
Safety / 8
Cleaning / 8
Market Stalls / 7
Pyramid Stage / 6
Catering / 8
Green Areas / 10
Total / 478
The Aftermath
Once the festival is over, the site must be cleared and returned to farm land. The service equipment - piping, toilets, generators, wiring, etc, is removed within the week and a litter removal operation takes four weeks. Litter picking is then carried out once a week, all year round, in Pilton. When the leaves fall off the bushes in autumn, previously unnoticed litter has to be cleared from them. The organising team meets about a month after the event to review the festival and any changes that may be made for the following year.
Michael Eavis is keen to reduce the environmental impact of the festival on the surrounding area, both during and after the festival:
· Festival goers are encouraged to use public transport, with the railway and coach networks providing additional services
· A 50 m high wind turbine contributes 150 k W to the power required for the stage lighting power system
· Tin and glass collected by litter pickers are recycled and polystyrene products (eg. cups and containers) were banned in 1995.
· An enormous slurry pit collects and filters the sewage from the toilets, which is then processed and re-used on the land after 6 months.
A 1995 festivalgoer commented on the environmental impact of the festival:
“The environmental aspect of the festival seems to be a little underplayed. The wind generator, vast and impressive up close, soon diminishes to a toy. Greenpeace celebrated the dismantling (rather than the sinking) of the Brent Spar oil rig in 1995, but it hardly became a focal point. The amount of rubbish generated must be phenomenal! It is kept in check by litter patrols who can be seen on the back of filthy trucks with oil drums full of rubbish and wandering around with rubbish bags, handed to all and sundry ‘volunteers’. The legendary toilets live up to their reputation. No matter how often they may be cleaned you can’t escape overflowing cubicles!’
Festival Finances
The 1994 budget for the festival stood at around £3.5 million, which was raised from ticket sales and traders’ fees. Ninety percent of this budget is spent on festival overheads and the remaining 10 per cent goes to charitable causes, the main beneficiaries being Greenpeace and a large number of local organisations. Income from ticket sales and traders’ fees in 1994, for example was £3 540 000 and was allocated as shown in Table 3.4
Table 3.4 Breakdown of costs from the 1994 Glastonbury Festival
Area / ExpenditureBands / 500 000
Theatre performers / 200 000
Green field area / 80 000
Staging / 100 000
Cinema / 15 000
Litter picking and waste disposal / 150 000
Children’s areas / 30 000
Wages / 500 000
Police / 360 000
Other security / 200 000
Land use (neighbours) / 75 000
Fire services / 45 000
Medical & welfare / 30 000
Administration and office costs / 65 000
Plant hire / 300 000
Electricity / 165 000
Water / 60 000
Licensing & rates / 30 000
Catering / 50 000
National Insurance / 35 000
Site contractors / 100 000
Advertising / 50 000
Gate costs / 40 000
Communications & telephone / 20 000
Car parking / 30 000
Charitable donations (at least) / 310 000
Total / 3 540 000
Popularity
Of all the festivals, Glastonbury appears to be the most popular. Tickets invariably sell out, with demand far outstripping supply. Perhaps the reason for the festival’s enduring popularity is the fact that it is organised by a group of enthusiasts and volunteers as opposed to being a commercially driven operation.
Aspects of festival organisation take place throughout the year. Once the festival is over and the site cleared the financial and administrative issues need to be settled. It is not surprising that every few years the organisational team needs a break. Consequently, no festival was held in 1996 to allow them to do this. Finally the following extracts from interviews with two festivalgoers may explain the popularity of the festival and why they return year after year. First, Jill Griffiths has been to the 1994 and 1995 Glastonbury festivals and spoke of her experience