Glastonbury is over—but what might it look like in the future? Artists are proposing a sustainable model – The Art Newspaper

Now that Glastonbury competition is over, the mammoth clear up begins. Regardless of organisers selling its “love the farm, depart no hint” coverage, round 1% of tents—roughly 4,000 in whole—are estimated to have been left on the Somerset web site. This isn’t to say the blow-up mattresses, sleeping luggage and different waste—half of which Glastonbury manages to recycle or reuse.

Nevertheless, one stage within the southeast nook of the competition went one step additional this yr in a bid to create a imaginative and prescient for an alternate future: one which prioritises nature, group and sensible options to among the crises we face as a planet. As an alternative of the same old hoardings and sculptures, festival-goers who discovered themselves at Shangri-La had been greeted with allotments, crops and seeds to take house and stitch—all introduced collectively underneath the banner of The Wilding. 

“We had an entire reset,” says Shangri-La’s artistic director, Kaye Dunnings. “We wished to return to the sensation of experiencing collective real-life pleasure, of being current, and discovering one thing new with wonderment and awe.”

Dotted across the Shangri-La area had been artistic endeavors and performances: there have been “Telly-Shrubbies” in cabbage costumes, a procession led by the renegade Morris dancing troupe Boss Morris and a juke field that deposited seeds to take house each time a tune was paid for. In a single nook, an immersive backyard area referred to as Sonic Bloom let guests take heed to and work together with the sounds of nature through a set of interconnected horn-shaped constructions. The work was a collaboration with the charity Sounds Proper, which recognises Mom Nature as an artist and supplies the Earth with royalties.

One of many greatest developments for the Shangri-La stage is the acquisition of a plot of land close to to the Glastonbury competition web site, the place most of the crops grown and put in as a part of its programme this yr might be tended to till the occasion returns in 2027. (Subsequent yr is a fallow yr to permit the land to replenish.) The purpose is for Shangri-La to maintain reusing the bushes and crops as a method of making a really sustainable exhibition mannequin.

New types of activism

One part of the Shangri-La area this yr, in the meantime, was devoted to allotments. “As an alternative of asking artists to make stuff, I requested them what they might do with a 2m by 3m plot of land,” Dunnings says. Some artists opted to develop tomatoes; others grew wildflowers. Every part was natural and grown from seed. Dunnings factors out that allotments are one of many final protected areas for folks to domesticate the land within the UK. “Rising crops is a extremely highly effective factor that anybody can do,” she says. “Allotments are the brand new nightclubs—that’s my new motto.”

For her allotment, Coral Manton created a circle of wheat and wildflowers, inside which festival-goers might sit. The piece was impressed by the crop circles the artist-technologist used to make in Warwickshire—a apply she says holds completely different meanings for various folks. “Some folks do scientific experiments in them as a result of they imagine they’ve been created by aliens, different folks meditate in them,” Manton says. “Crop circles are typically referred to as non permanent temples, and I like that ingredient of contemplation. It’s as a lot about how folks activate the areas because the making of them.”

Her set up, titled Area Work, additionally speaks to concepts of land entry and sustainable farming, in keeping with the artist-technologist. “As a result of we make crop circles with lengths of string and picket boards, which flatten the wheat, the crops are inclined to spring again up in time with little or no harm,” Manton explains. “Most of the time it’s the quantity of people that come and go to them that may do the harm. However farmers try to discover methods spherical it and put out donation tins so folks can contribute that method.”

The artist Rachel Taylor, who’s a part of the collective Shapers of Society, created a chunk referred to as Meadow of Potentialities, the place Glastonbury goers might write their affirmations on items of wildflower seed paper, rip them up and plant the seeds for future generations. Taylor says a brand new type of activism is bobbing up, which is “much less shouty” and extra about “caring for each other and caring for the planet”. She provides: “Caring might be one of the crucial radical issues you are able to do. Softness is rising as a brand new type of activism, and Shangri-La actually embodied that this yr. Very like Large Assault are doing, they’re exhibiting us what is definitely doable when it comes to sustainable methods of doing issues.”

Glastonbury Pageant’s eco-conscious roots date again to the founding of the occasion itself in 1970. The Inexperienced Fields have been powered by photo voltaic, wind and pedal energy for no less than twenty years and large strides have been made lately to general cut back emissions and waste. In 2023, the competition introduced that every one its energy wants have been met by renewable vitality and gasoline and, over the previous two years, it has banned all single-use plastics, disposable vapes, moist wipes and glitter.

However Taylor thinks there may be nonetheless a lot to be achieved—not solely when it comes to sustainability but additionally when it comes to radically rethinking what it means to assemble a competition as a group. Shangri-La was born from traveller roots and at present is an inclusive area for queer and under-represented communities. As Taylor places it: “I believe the Inexperienced Fields and Greenpeace might be taught lots from Shangri-La. They’ve actually set the bar excessive for the entire of Glastonbury this yr.”