Glastonbury Festival

Production

Ah, backstage ... for some people it seems like a promised land, a forbidden place, a glamorous locale where only a privileged few are allowed. But next time you're near a backstage entrance take a closer look : for every face you recognise there will be ten you don't, the sweaty people with steel toe-capped boots, hard-hats and work gloves, tractor and forklift drivers, humping crews, riggers, caterers, sound, light and video engineers, plumbers, electricians - the people who make it happen.

The truth is that backstage areas are work-zones, often very dusty (or even muddy!) places with heavy plant moving around, and about as un-glam as it gets. True, there's a few of your favourite stars hanging around before or after their sets and some corporate sponsors' facilities, but in the main it's the place where the work gets done so that the fun side can happen - out in the main festival site ! This is probably more so at Glastonbury than at most other events : Michael Eavis is insistent that resources should go into the public areas, and to supporting the Festival's good causes. Any tour manager will tell you that you won't get the most lavish dining arrangements at Glastonbury, nor the plushest dressing rooms of the summer. But it'll still be the key gig - because of the unique Glastonbury vibe on the Festival site.

So whatever you expected to find in this backstage area perhaps you'll forgive us if we dedicate these pages to the workers, and to explain a bit about their work.

Every year we get hundreds of emails and letters from people wanting to start careers in the live production side of the music and events industry. During the autumn of this year we'll be posting a lot of detailed advice and even some tutorial information for people wanting to start out in sound engineering, lighting, crewing, production management, etc. We also get a lot of mail from people studying event management at college. We hope these pages will be of some use to you as well. Sorry, but we cannot enter into a lot of correspondence, especially at this time of year. You can get a Student Info Pack (see the Contacts Page for details.)

Backstage areas :

Some thoughts about Event Planning

Water Supply at Glastonbury

A History of the Cinema Production at Glastonbury

Other articles useful for students and researchers can be found in the History section of the website.

Articles

Macca's Driver Found!!

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