Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists have headlined, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas. Films and albums recorded at Glastonbury have been released, and the festival receives extensive television and newspaper coverage. Glastonbury is the largest greenfield festival in the world, and is now attended by around 175,000 people, requiring extensive infrastructure in terms of security, transport, water, and electricity supply. The majority of staff are volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for good causes.

Inspired by the ethos of the hippie, counterculture, and free festival movements, the festival retains vestiges of these traditions, such as the Green Fields area, which includes sections known as the Green Futures and Healing Fields. After the 1970s, the festival took place almost every year and grew in size, with the number of attendees sometimes being swollen by gate-crashers. Michael Eavis hosted the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open-air Led Zeppelin concert at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music.

Glastonbury Festival 2010

The 2010 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts took place in Pilton, Somerset, England in June 2010.

The festival was headlined by Gorillaz, Muse, and Stevie Wonder. U2 were initially announced as headliners, but withdrew on 25 May 2010 citing Bono's recent back surgery. Gorillaz were announced as the replacement.

The festival was totally rain-free for the first time since 2002, and experienced the hottest average temperatures since the early 1990s. The total attendance of the event was 177,500.

Tickets

Similar to previous years, ticket buyers were required to pre-register to buy tickets with photographic identification, a measure employed to avoid reselling and touting. Tickets went on sale on 4 October and sold out within 12 hours of going on sale; quicker than the past two festivals. The general resale commenced on 11 April at 9:00 am, with all tickets selling out within 2 hours.

Line up

On 23 November 2009, it was announced that U2 would be headlining the Friday evening of the festival. Other acts confirmed by organisers include Jack Johnson, the early winners of the Emerging Talent Competition, My Luminaries and eventual final winners Ellen and the Escapades.

Glastonbury

Coordinates: 51°08′55″N 2°42′50″W / 51.1485°N 2.7140°W / 51.1485; -2.7140

Glastonbury /ˈɡlæstənbri/ is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, 23 miles (37 km) south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury is less than 1 mile (2 km) across the River Brue from Street, which is now larger than Glastonbury.

Evidence from timber trackways such as the Sweet Track show that the town has been inhabited since Neolithic times. Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age village, close to the old course of the River Brue and Sharpham Park approximately 2 miles (3 km) west of Glastonbury, that dates back to the Bronze Age. Centwine was the first Saxon patron of Glastonbury Abbey, which dominated the town for the next 700 years. One of the most important abbeys in England, it was the site of Edmund Ironside's coronation as King of England in 1016. Many of the oldest surviving buildings in the town, including the Tribunal, George Hotel and Pilgrims' Inn and the Somerset Rural Life Museum, which is based in an old tithe barn, are associated with the abbey. The Church of St John the Baptist dates from the 15th century.

2010

2010 (MMX) was a common year starting on Friday (dominical letter C) of the Gregorian calendar, the 2010th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 10th year of the 3rd millennium, the 10th year of the 21st century, and the 1st year of the 2010s decade.

2010 was designated as:

Pronunciation

There is a debate among experts and the general public on how to pronounce specific years of the 21st century in English. The year 2010 is pronounced either "two thousand (and) ten", or "twenty-ten". 2010 was the first year to have a wide variation in pronunciation, as the years 2000 to 2009 were generally pronounced "two thousand (and) one, two, three, etc." as opposed to the less common "twenty-oh-_".

Events

January

Festival

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions, often marked as a local or national holiday, mela or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.