From Shania Twain to SZA, the final day of the Glastonbury Festival was full of verve and vigour but not all the stars shined. Jonny Walfisz braved the long day and stayed up all night to see Worthy Farm close close for another year. Glastonbury has come to a close and once again, the hundreds of thousands of festival goers are finding their way back across the country to their humdrum lives, away from the anarchic chaos of a city dedicated to art, culture, spirituality and politics.
It’s been an incredible year, but not without some hiccups. Here’s everything that happened on final day, and what we made of the festival overall. Terminal 1 is a new art installation to this year, intended to replicate the refugee experience for the largely British crowd.
It’s an arresting piece, constructed over four stacked shipping containers. You enter and are immediately assaulted by a dictatorial customs officer who forces the entrees to answer a question from the British citizenship test. Get it wrong and you’ll be kicked out having waited at least 20 minutes to get in.
Succeed, and the next assault is a collection of border guards who ask you to take your shoes off in an unfamiliar language before chucking them across the room, for you to walk over gravel and retrieve them. Make it through this and the experience shifts to a beamingly kind welcome to Rwanda’s duty free where you learn a local Kigali proverb. It’s not subtle, but it rams home its theme with merciless efficien.
