Hey as some of you know I spent my summer this year working at 6 major music festivals all over the country.
At the festivals I did 12 hour shifts working behind the bars, being a human sign and parking thousands and thousands of cars.
I went to The Isle of Wight Festival, Glastonbury, T in the Park, Latitude, Leeds and Electric Picnic and it was the most amazing experience of my whole life. I saw the strangest sights you will ever see and some of the biggest bands and musicians in the industry.
The first time I went to Glastonbury I was 6 weeks old and I have been to most years since then. have experienced the mud, heatwaves and the toilets! And have realised the many ways that technology and design could help both festival planners and festival goers. For example the site is huge. For one long weekend each year a small corner of countryside in Glastonbury becomes the size of a small city. The logistics involved in getting everyone there and safely home, feeding them, getting water for washing and toilets and making sure everyone is safe is huge. It can be really intimidating for newbies and apps and websites could be developed to make their experience better and safer. And The planners would be very keen to find better ways for people to be moved on and off site and around the site when they are there. Over this summer I watched closely and have identified lots of ways that I think I could be helpful in improving this. At the moment I have lots of ideas and am refining them to decide which specific project I should develop this year. I have chosen to do a project based around festivals because that’s the field I want to work in when I leave uni, I want to get a job doing something festival based. So if I’m going to get a job in design I want them to see my passion
When your standing alone for 12 hours doing a shift you have a lot of time to think and I thought about ideas for my honours project and one day I came up with the idea of a comparison app or website. There you could go to compare the details of all the major festivals, as nowhere like that exists at the moment, nowhere you can compare the genre of the festivals, the ticket prices, where in the UK they are. So when I go back I started to piece the information about each festival but after a few lectures I realised that there aren’t a lot of research question based on design that can fit into my idea so I had to think of another one. Basically when you were finished your last shift on the Monday of a festival you would do a thing called tatting which is basicall scavenging around the fields looking for food and booze.
The first festival we did this at was Glastonbury and I couldn’t believe how much stuff was left behind. It looked as if the festival was still running because I’d say 70% of the tents were still there, enough food to feed all of our staff for two days, 2 wheel barrows of beer, I found 3 hoodys, hundreds of wellies and that was only on one corner of one camping field. This got me thinking that all the food, clothes and tents could be put to good use instead o being bulldozed and taken to the dumps.
There is a campaign that Glastonbury set up called Please Take it Home and it was basically to make the festivalgoers see how much was left behind and to change their minds about doing it. This video was on every screen at the festival between the acts:
Yet this campaign failed as the numbers of things left were the exact same the next year.
For my honours project I want to look into different advertising charity campaigns and to see what part of design makes them successful or not.
I also want to look into different types of media used in campaigns. I have experience in Radio so I would like to look into that as well as on the artists side of things what makes a good design for a campaign. What catches the peoples eyes and makes them pay attention and act in favour of the campaign.
For the honours project I’d like to look into making my own advertising campaign, It would be a new and improved campaign for festivals to help stop people leaving stuff behind but also adding a few new factors too. I was thinking about setting up a deal with local charities might be a good idea where they can come in and have a post at the exits of the campsites where passersby can leave things they cant carry or don’t want. It could also be a good place to be handed water as when your dragging bags through the mud for hours there is nothing you want more. The tents and clothes could be given to the homeless or something like the wellies could be recycled. It’s all just ideas at the moment but here’s an example of a campaign most people have heard of and I think it’s an great video and I hope to make something as inspiring as this.
