Michael Eavis Travels To Denmark On Fact Finding Mission

At the end of June everyone's favourite landowner took a trip to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. It has a permanent site (it's not a farm) which means lots of roads, running water and flush toilets - and is roughly half the size of Glastonbury Festival with an average attendance being about 65,000. Roskilde is in terms of organisation the closest festival to Glastonbury being staffed mostly by volunteers and putting a lot of its income into charitable causes. Why did Michael go there? Last year as we all know Glastonbury Festival was a little overcrowded due to a near epidemic outbreak of fence jumping which not only made queuing for the toilets more unpleasant than usual it also jeopardised the future of the festival. The overcrowding heightened the probability of people being crushed and it was only a combination of good stewarding, excellent band scheduling (big acts clash on purpose), big screens, good sound systems with delay speakers and a pinch of good luck that prevented this. Unfortunately some people at Roskilde were not so lucky and nine people were crushed to death in front of the main stage. As a result of this tragedy crowd 'control' at Roskilde has had to be re-evaluated. This is something that Glastonbury Festival has obviously also been looking into and so with passport in hand Michael set off to see what changes had been made and whether any of them could be applied to Glastonbury. So what happened when he got to Denmark? The Danish media gave his visit a lot of positive coverage (British mainstream media take note!) being very interested in his thoughts and opinions on crowd management and safety. And when he arrived at the festival? It's quite funny, before he could get in he Michael spent an hour and a half in the passes office waiting for someone to verify whom he was! What safety systems did he see? It was in the main arena that the deaths occurred and it was there that the new systems were implemented. In front of the stage a cattle pen type structure was erected so that audience numbers could be regulated. On stage two observers watched the crowd for any sign of problems and large video screens (much bigger than the ones on stage) with extra speakers were positioned halfway up the field to coax some of the audience away from the front. Will Glastonbury be using these systems next year? Michael was not keen on the 'cattle pens' as he thought they lessened the atmosphere and he was not convinced of their safety advantages. However he was very positive about the idea of the screens as they not only improved on site safety they also increased the enjoyment of those not able or willing to go to the front of the stage for a good view of the bands. It seems quite likely that this style of screen layout will be used for the pyramid stage next year.