“For those who have been asking, we have no plans to move next year’s Glastonbury to September 2021 – we’re still very much aiming for June,” Emily Eavis tweeted. She went on to say that so few would-be attendees had asked for refunds that ticket resale would be pushed back from October, 2020 to April, 2021, and that the 2021 event remains sold out.

Glastonbury was one of countless events called off on account of COVID-19 in 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, a festival collapse claimed gatherings like Ultra Music Festival, Coachella Music & Arts Festival and Movement Electronic Music Festival in rapid succession, offering a glimpse of the economic turmoil to follow. As summer approached, Burning Man, Awakenings Festival and others followed suit.

Glastonbury festival has yet to announce 2021 dates at the time of writing.

In conversation with ITV News West Country, Eavis addressed how COVID-19 restrictions would prevent Glastonbury from taking place in its longstanding format. “500 people is ok, isn’t it,” he said. “But my job – 250,000 altogether – is too many people I suppose, isn’t it really.”

Eavis maintained that organizers would exhaust all possibilities before pulling out of the 2021 event. “I’m still hoping I’m going to be running next year and I’m going to be moving heaven and earth to make sure that we do. But that doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen. That is just wishful thinking really.”

Suggesting that Glastonbury Festival might not take place until 2022 stands in stark contrast to comments Eavis made in a June interview with The Guardian. “We have to run next year otherwise we would seriously go bankrupt … It has to happen for us, we have to carry on,” he had said. “Otherwise, it will be curtains. I don’t think we could wait another year.”

In between then and now, the U.K. government has rolled out substantial financial support for live music brands. In July, Boris Johnson announced a £1.57 billion relief package for cultural institutions. It is unclear whether the prospect of aid influenced Eavis’ change in outlook.

In place of their 2020 event, Glastonbury celebrated their 50th anniversary with an interactive V&A Museum campaign.

In addition to The Glastonbury Festival Archive, which the V&A Museum has overseen since 2014, the project calls upon attendees to share stories from past editions as part of a memory collection. As reported by The Guardian, it kicked off on Monday, June 22nd and will remain active for seven days.

Dance Music and Glastonbury

Owing to its integral role in U.K. youth culture, much of Glastonbury’s history has been intertwined with electronic music. As noted by The Guardian, acid house became a prominent fixture of the festival – fittingly in 1989 – because of crews like Sugarlump and Mindscapes.

Although the coronavirus pandemic derailed the 50th anniversary of the festival, organizers hope to bring it back in 2021. Dates for next year’s edition have yet to be announced at the time of writing.

Browse The Glastonbury Festival Archive here.

Image Credit: Glastonbury Festival

“In response to recent stories in the media, we would like to state that Glastonbury Festival’s post-event litter picking team are all given temporary worker agreements for the duration of the clean-up,” read a post to the event website. “As well as being paid, they are provided with free meals and access to on-site facilities.”

The statement went on to explain that the labor hours required to complete the cleanup varied year by year. Organizers cited unusually dry weather and attendees’ proactive cleanup efforts as the factors reducing the cleanup time to 2.5 days, where in 2016 it had required ten. “Those who weren’t able to leave the site over the weekend were given further meals, plus assistance with travel to nearby towns with public transport links,” the statement read.

2018 is a “fallow year,” meaning that the festival grounds will be given time to recover during that time. Glastonbury Festival will return to Somerset, England in 2019.

Workers from numerous European countries had traveled to Somerset, England after signing “zero-hour contracts” – meaning that the promoter was not required to guarantee them a minimum amount of work. A video obtained by The Independent shows a man presumed to be a litter picker supervisor physically pushing a protesting worker from the path of a vehicle.

Ironically, only a week prior Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had taken to Glastonbury Festival’s Pyramid Stage alongside the gathering’s founder, Michael Eavis, to declare that young people didn’t need to “accept low wages and insecurity as just part of life.”

Jeremy Corbyn, left, speaking next to Michael Eavis, right, at Glastonbury Festival 2017.

Glastonbury Festival inaugurated in 1970, with the 2017 edition taking place from June 21st-25th. It takes place annually except on fallow years when the land is given time to recover – meaning that there will not be a 2018 edition.

The festival’s organizers have not issued an official statement on the displacement of its workers as of this writing.

Source: Dancing Astronaut