Glastonbury: Beyond The Music & Mud
As part of Music Week, Community Channel looks beyond the music and the mud of Glastonbury festival with two home grown documentaries about the huge volunteer effort that goes on behind the scenes at the largest music and performing arts festival in the world. The documentary Down & Dirty in Glastonbury (2004), showing on Tuesday, February 13th at 10pm (repeated on Wednesday, February 14th at 7pm), delves into why Glastonbury festival is not just a 24-hour party, but also ‘synonymous with the idea of a better world.’ And Glastonbury High, showing on Friday, February 16th at 7pm (repeated on Sunday, February 18th at 2:30 pm) explores how the torrential rain that hit the festival in 2005 ended up making ‘wellies’ very popular.
The witty Down & Dirty in Glastonbury (2004) joins four different charities as they experience Glastonbury in a different light. Ninety WaterAid volunteers educate participants about the importance of water, and provide the muddy festival with safe drinking water and sanitation. Greenpeace raises money and collects signatures to flush out poverty, while Oxfam secures the gates and provides showers and toilet facilities to the event. And the Festival Medical Services runs two large hospitals and a fleet of ambulances on site, treating over 2,200 patients. The Green Field, an environmental paradise where this renowned festival transpires, effectively combines traditional skills and new ways of thinking ‘in an explosion of creativity.’
Glastonbury High also shows just how the festival relies on so much more than just music to make it a success. The Groovy Movie Picture house uses little power to run its course, educating about the energy conservation effort. Similarly, the festival made popular the retro ‘wellie’ boot, as the first day of the Festival brought torrential rains. Within hours of the rain starting, thousands of ‘wellies’ were sold, more than £13,000 sold in total, and thus began the new craze of prints and fashion ‘wellies’. Alongside the ‘wellies’ were healing fields and environment friendly coffins, all as a part of preserving our beautiful earth. As one festival-goer says, ‘Mud doesn’t stop the hardcore fans,’ and this was certainly the case for both the participants and volunteers who help make Glastonbury Festival an overwhelming success.
Both Glastonbury documentaries are being shown as part of Community Channel’s Music Week (12th – 18th February); all this week the channel will be showing a fantastic range of colourful music documentaries, which include an Arts Council Film about the legendary Stax Records called The Soul of Stax.
