The greenest place in Glastonbury, before the event really got under way on Friday morning, seemed to be Arcadia. There, beneath an immense metal spider, the grass lay untrampled and unsullied. Though not for long: come Friday night, the Arcadia crew were expecting 20,000 people to cram into their area, with a further 30,000 surrounding it to watch their son-et-lumiere-et-whatever-else-came-to-hand spectacular.
They had one advantage. They got everything big in before the rains – variously described as “biblical”, “epic” and “torrential” – that swept across Somerset last weekend. Without the need for trucks criss-crossing the sodden ground, their green patch shone like a giant emerald set inside a ring of deepest brown. Nevertheless, there was fear as the water fell, seemingly without end: what might happen to the enormous quantities of electronics that control the show? Would they be safe?
Others hadn’t been so fortunate. Just hours before its scheduled soft opening on Wednesday night, the Block 9 dance area was fenced off, with signs reading “Block 9 building site – PPE must be worn at all times”. There were still JCBs on site and building materials littering the area, and the Guardian wasn’t allowed in to look around. In fact, even Block 9’s publicist admitted he wasn’t allowed in.
But not only must the show go on, it does go on. At Block 9, everyone had been mucking in – even artists scheduled to perform there had offered their services in pulling the site together – and come midnight on Wednesday, it opened its gates for its “soft opening” for the first partiers. It was four hours late, admittedly, but eight hours earlier, anyone looking through the fence would have bet it was four weeks away from opening, not four hours. And from Thursday night, it would be on full bore, for those keen to escape reality through dancing, with 50,000 people expected to pass through it on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
Over in Shangri-La, where the finishing touches – or in some cases what looked like the starting touches – were being put to the array of attractions, there was the same sense of optimism that it would be all right on the night. “We’ll be ready for Thursday,” said Nick McAllister of Monster Vision – purveyors of alternative children’s heroes, from Stranger Danger Mouse to HR Man and the Managers of the Universe – standing in a space that looked suspiciously empty. “Even if we go from finishing to opening in two seconds, we’ll be ready.”
These are the times when you become aware quite how much effort and labour goes into an event this herculean in scale. Arcadia, Block 9 and Shangri-La are just three areas out of dozens at Glastonbury – three of the most popular for those who want to party and dance as much as watch bands, but just three. Yet thousands of people had worked to bring them to life. At Arcadia, the crew had peaked in size at 500, with a similar number at Block 9. Over at Shangri-La, Andrew Vaughan had worked with around 30 artists to put together the gaudy, disorienting visuals around the site, with a production crew of up to 400 people constructing the site – this year themed around the idea of “media hell” and the manipulation of the public.
“We got here on 1 June,” said Vaughan, with the slight air of a man who realises there is a great deal more to do and only finite time to do it in. “But we really started in November, when we began building up an idea.” This year’s Shangri-La was sketched, then worked up into a computer plan, and then artists were invited to send in their ideas.
And has he ever had to reject an idea? Is anything too extreme?
“We’ve rejected things. But it’s never because they’re too extreme. It’s because everything has to fit together. You need to have similar vibes in the different parts of the field. But some things we don’t have a clue about it until very late.”
Does that make him panic a little? “Sometimes I have to get out of my own ego and realise it not all about us.”
Arcadia, now a huge production that travels around the world visiting different cities, with a permanent crew of 50 in addition to the hundreds of local workers, started out as a Glastonbury campfire dream. Its founders, Bertie Cole and Pip Rush, had been Glastonbury regulars since they were kids. Then one year, “we had a vision around the campfire that festivals lacked something, that it’s all too conventional and linear. It was missing something 360-degree.” They made their first sculpture in 2008: “We had a vision, but we had no idea that it would become the immersive experience it has become. And every year is different.”
Their set, dominated by the giant, 50-tonne spider, inside which is a DJ booth, is built almost entirely from recycled and reclaimed materials, especially old military scrap. For years, Cole got the military scrap from a yard his dad used to take him to as a kid; now he fears he’s exhausted the opportunities for high-quality military materials within the UK and he’s having to look further afield.
What he ends up with dictates how the set will look, at what changes Arcadia will make to the spider. This year, as well as the main structure and the familiar Tesla coils, there will be mini-spiders scurrying along the big one’s legs, and a new 20-metre propane flame, which the DJs can trigger during their sets (aided by a 30-string crew in what Cole calls “mission control”, each looking after a different part of the spectacle). Even testing that flame on Tuesday night attracted a crowd of several hundred festival workers, drawn not so much like moths, but like anyone who suddenly sees what looks like a fairly significant explosion.
You’d think it must all be a health and safety nightmare, but not so much, Cole says. Arcadia’s knowledge is now so specialised that health and safety authorities come to them asking their advice on techniques that Arcadia has safely used. “There aren’t many health and safety people who know about Tesla coils,” Cole says, with perfect understatement.
When you see these sites by day, you can have only the faintest idea what they will become by night. They already look spectacular – Arcadia’s spider provides a convenient visual reference point for those on the south side of the site; Block 9, with a subway train crashing into the side of a building, looks like a particularly gnarly Disneyland ride; Shangri-La is a riot of colour and invention.
But until the parties truly begin, they are just shells. As Cole says, what makes these stages come to life is the presence of crowds. Throw in the lights, the noise, the music, the hordes, and it becomes something very different indeed. It ceases to be a quickly built temporary structure. It becomes part of Glastonbury.
