Find out how two of our Zone Clubbers supported our volunteer steward team at this years' Glastonbury Festival. By Karl Bevis, Creative Producer of Zone Club
The iconic Glastonbury Festival is a huge event, both in its incredible scale and in its significance to the music calendar. This year it became just as huge and significant to Zone Club and to two Zone Clubbers in particular.
You may know that this sprawling festival on Pilton’s Worthy Farm takes an army of volunteers to run, covering a range of vital jobs to make the event happen. Whether they’re standing at a gate to check lanyard–passes or shepherding music-lovers through certain busy channels, the volunteer stewards are everywhere. For the third summer, there’s also been a team of stewards looking after the Notting Hill Carnival (NHC) float, and that team fundraises for Zone Club.
All volunteering is in aid of a charity whether local or national. Three years ago, Zone Club, recognised as valuable local charity, was invited to provide a team of 12 people to look after the dancers and steel pans of Notting Hill Carnival. This has proved to be a valuable source of income for the project, and we have developed a warm relationship with NHC.
This year, wanting to up our game even further, we were keen to get some of the Zone Clubbers involved too. So, following a lengthy process of application and online training, last month Lee and Brook joined the team for a day to experience the festival up close and to play their part in being volunteer stewards.
They were amazing! Glastonbury Festival is noisy and often smelly in ways that can be hugely overwhelming. But they both stepped up and got involved in a very chaotic and dusty environment – a wholly new adventure.
Both lads can be the masters of understatement when asked directly, but Brook’s Nan told me “Brook loved his time at Glastonbury”.
To be clear, we worked them hard on the day. Our stewarding role involved accompanying the float and the dancers, in their Brazil-style carnival outfits, as we moved through the markets and performance fields. These spaces were often congested and having to constantly ask the crowds to step back and allow us through was gruelling. But in the heat of the day the Zone Clubbers embraced the role and did their job to keep all involved safe and happy. A bit of dancing to the steel-pan band was also allowed!
Incredibly, we covered 14 kilometres on that one day, always on high alert for festival-goers too busy staring at their phones to notice the oncoming carnival parade.
We finished the day with fish and chips, sitting in the famous Pyramid Field. We even sang our favourite Zone Club Anthem with the Pyramid Stage in the background. Over the following days this same festival, this same field, would host The 1975, Lewis Capaldi, and Alanis Morissette. But for us the festival belonged to Lee and Brook, and Zone Club. They smashed it!
Take a look at our video from the day:
A huge thank you to all our stewards for their support for Zone Club. If you would like to donate to Zone Club, please use the donation slider below: