Glastonbury Festival, a 5-day annual extravaganza of performing arts made a flamboyant return at the Croissant Neuf, after a three-year break due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Over two lakh people of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities, lifestyles, faiths, concepts of fashion (or lack of it), and musical taste returned to the 50th edition of the festival and attended various line-ups of events that were organized in the festival.
The people coming here understand that Glastonbury Festival offers them more opportunities than any other happening, to have the best weekend of the year or even of a lifetime, and they are determined to have it!
Sally Howell, the organizer at the Croissant Neuf, told Betway online casino about the challenges that she usually faces in organizing an event on such a large scale. It requires extensive security, transport, water, and electricity-supply infrastructure.
“It’s still like putting on a mini-festival within a festival,” says Howell.
She said that she and her crew were on a constant round-the-clock job of building the event at least a week before its commencement and after the festival emded. All of her crew were professional and went around doing their jobs with utter motivation and dedication. She adds by saying that “it’s like a pop-up in a few days.”
The Croissant Neuf field runs entirely on Solar Power, which given the ‘changeable reputation’ of British weather in Summers, is itself a risky strategy. Even Sally reflected on the days when things didn't go as planned.
“Our most challenging year was 2016 because it had rained a lot before the festival and during setup”, Howell said, “Tyres on vehicles ended up just churning up all the fields into muddy bogs. It was an absolute nightmare”.
Organizing such an event does not only involve building things but also requires booking acts for people’s enjoyment. Howell says that it was the responsibility of only her and her son to book the right band for the event.
Even though they received all kinds of offers, by the March end they booked all that they seemed to be the right ones for attendees' taste. The closer the festival gets, their life becomes ‘one big spreadsheet’. They try to include all music genres in their selections.
Howell also acknowledged the help that she and her team received from Radio6 in establishing their network with the stage managers and this enabled them to scout ‘new and up-and-coming stuff’. They encouraged new talents to debut from their platform too.
One such ‘undiscovered debut’ was from an unknown artist in 2011, she recalled. The artist’s name was Ed Sheeran. Howell said that though it won't be right for her alone to take credit for discovering him, as 'he was a friend of a friend of people' that she booked. The following year that he came, he launched A-Team, and thereafter he went on to become too expensive to be afforded by her and the team.
“We gave him an opportunity on the bottom rung of the ladder and that’s really what Croissant Neuf is about”, says Sally Howell.