More than any Glastonbury since the Brexit weekend of 2016, this year’s festival was welly-deep in dissent. From Banksy’s controversial migrant life-raft stunt, to the omnipresent “Vote Out to Help Out” posters, the always-political event seemed to reach new heights of revolutionary fervour.

Janelle Monáe’s set, a highlight of the festival, was heavy on the glitz. The iconic vagina trousers from the “Pynk” video, coupled with a clitoris headpiece, were met with a rapturous response. But the audience excitement reached its pinnacle not during Monáe’s Michael Jackson-esque dance interlude, or their numerous outfit changes, but during her impassioned monologue on the importance of intersectional support.

Meanwhile, the new stages added to the festival each felt like a revolution in itself. Scissors took the place of the notorious Rabbit Hole to create a femme-queer utopia, hidden, prohibition-style, behind the frontage of a barber’s shop. Arrivals made history as the festival’s first dedicated South Asian space. And Terminal 1, a faux-airport-terminal, encouraged attendees into its interminable queue to take the British citizenship test. Only then would they be allowed into the exclusive space above.

Of course, given the then-imminent general election, this reinvigoration of the political may be no surprise. But with public services collapsing faster than a poorly erected teepee, and those in power proving themselves grubbier than our Glastonbury-Sunday fingernails, the feeling of generalised political pissed-off-ness went well beyond election fever. This year it seemed that escapism, for so long the festival’s forte, was simply no longer an option. To bastardise a slogan: it wasn’t enough to Love the Farm — we wanted the Tories to Leave No Trace.

Evie Prichard

Find out more about Glastonbury Festival 26 – 30 June, 2024, on the Glastonbury Festival website.