Mendip Profiles > Mendip Brands > Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is an important player in Somerset's economy. A report last year put the economic benefits of the festival at £73,000,000.
Apart from being arguably the most prestigious and long-running popular music festival in the world, there is no doubt that what should properly be called the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is important to the success of the whole Mendip region.
It all began when farmer Michael Eavis holding a fairly impromptu gathering for less than 1,000 people – including Marc Bolan – on his farm in Pilton, near Shepton Mallet in 1970.
2007’s festival – the 27th – attracted 177,500 people, watching 800 acts in an enclosed area of nearly 4 square kilometres.
An independent report commissioned last year by Mendip District Council put the economic benefits of the festival at £73,000,000: £25,000,000 spent ‘on site’; £26,000,000 spent ‘off site’ and £21,000,000 spent by the festival organization itself. The same report calculated that the Festival created the equivalent of 929 full-time jobs in the Mendip area.
As well as the festival itself, the organizers also stage the Glastonbury Classical Extravaganza (at Glastonbury Abbey) during August.
