Now that Glastonbury festival is over, the mammoth clear up begins. Despite organisers promoting its “love the farm, leave no trace” policy, around 1% of tents—approximately 4,000 in total—are estimated to have been left at the Somerset site. This is not to mention the blow-up mattresses, sleeping bags and other waste—half of which Glastonbury manages to recycle or reuse.
However, one stage in the southeast corner of the festival went one step further this year in a bid to create a vision for an alternative future: one that prioritises nature, community and practical solutions to some of the crises we are facing as a planet. Instead of the usual hoardings and sculptures, festival-goers who found themselves at Shangri-La were greeted with allotments, plants and seeds to take home and sew—all brought together under the banner of The Wilding.
“We had a complete reset,” says Shangri-La’s creative director, Kaye Dunnings. “We wanted to return to the feeling of experiencing collective real-life joy, of being present, and discovering something new with wonderment and awe.”
Festival-goers could listen to the sounds of Mother Nature in the Sonic Bloom installation Photo: Jody Hartley
Dotted around the Shangri-La field were works of art and performances: there were “Telly-Shrubbies” in cabbage costumes, a procession led by the renegade Morris dancing troupe Boss Morris and a juke box that deposited seeds to take home every time a song was paid for. In one corner, an immersive garden space called Sonic Bloom let visitors listen to and interact with the sounds of nature via a set of interconnected horn-shaped structures. The work was a collaboration with the charity Sounds Right, which recognises Mother Nature as an artist and provides the Earth with royalties.
One of the biggest developments for the Shangri-La stage is the purchase of a plot of land near to the Glastonbury festival site, where many of the plants grown and installed as part of its programme this year will be tended to until the event returns in 2027. (Next year is a fallow year to allow the land to replenish.) The aim is for Shangri-La to keep reusing the trees and plants as a way of creating a truly sustainable exhibition model.
New forms of activism
One section of the Shangri-La field this year, meanwhile, was dedicated to allotments. “Instead of asking artists to make stuff, I asked them what they would do with a 2m by 3m plot of land,” Dunnings says. Some artists opted to grow tomatoes; others grew wildflowers. Everything was organic and grown from seed. Dunnings points out that allotments are one of the last protected spaces for people to cultivate the land in the UK. “Growing plants is a really powerful thing that anyone can do,” she says. “Allotments are the new nightclubs—that’s my new motto.”
Coral Manton draws inspiration from her experience of making crop circles in Warwickshire. Photo: Jody Hartley
For her allotment, Coral Manton created a circle of wheat and wildflowers, inside which festival-goers could sit. The piece was inspired by the crop circles the artist-technologist used to make in Warwickshire—a practice she says holds different meanings for different people. “Some people do scientific experiments in them because they believe they have been created by aliens, other people meditate in them,” Manton says. “Crop circles are sometimes called temporary temples, and I love that element of contemplation. It’s as much about how people activate the spaces as the making of them.”
Her installation, titled Field Work, also speaks to ideas of land access and sustainable farming, according to the artist-technologist. “Because we make crop circles with lengths of string and wooden boards, which flatten the wheat, the crops tend to spring back up in time with very little damage,” Manton explains. “More often than not it’s the number of people who come and visit them that can do the damage. But farmers try and find ways round it and put out donation tins so people can contribute that way.”
The artist Rachel Taylor, who is part of the collective Shapers of Society, created a piece called Meadow of Possibilities, where Glastonbury goers could write their affirmations on pieces of wildflower seed paper, rip them up and plant the seeds for future generations. Taylor says a new form of activism is springing up, which is “less shouty” and more about “caring for one another and caring for the planet”. She adds: “Caring is probably one of the most radical things you can do. Softness is emerging as a new form of activism, and Shangri-La really embodied that this year. Much like Massive Attack are doing, they are showing us what is actually possible in terms of sustainable ways of doing things.”
Glastonbury revellers plant seeds in Rachel Taylor’s Meadow of Possibilities. Photo: Leora Bermeister
Glastonbury Festival’s eco-conscious roots date back to the founding of the event itself in 1970. The Green Fields have been powered by solar, wind and pedal power for at least two decades and huge strides have been made in recent years to overall reduce emissions and waste. In 2023, the festival announced that all its power needs have been met by renewable energy and fuel and, over the past two years, it has banned all single-use plastics, disposable vapes, wet wipes and glitter.
But Taylor thinks there is still much to be done—not only in terms of sustainability but also in terms of radically rethinking what it means to construct a festival as a community. Shangri-La was born from traveller roots and today is an inclusive space for queer and under-represented communities. As Taylor puts it: “I think the Green Fields and Greenpeace could learn a lot from Shangri-La. They have really set the bar high for the whole of Glastonbury this year.”
