The Arcadia team has come a long way since the day when a group of
plucky young Bristolians knocked on the door of Michael Eavis with an
offer to host a rave like no other at Glastonbur y. Since its first year in 2009,
Arcadia has become a staple within the Glastonbur y line-up and evolved
year on year, reaching a milestone in 2017 with the Metamorphosis show.
With the Spider now becoming a certified touring production, crawling
all over the world, the Arcadia team thought it was time to start with a fresh
slate and build a new experience that would be unique for Glastonbur y.
The end result was Pangea, a whole new concept centred around an old
Bristolian dock crane. With the dust settled on 2019’s festival, TPi got to sit
down with some of the creatives to speak about the origins of this year’s
events and the technical backbone that made it all possible.
“We always knew we wanted to call the installation Pangea, [the name
of the supercontinent that existed prior to the current configuration ofcontinents we know today],” began Bertie Cole, Co-Founder and Technical
Director for Arcadia. “It was all about going back to the beginning. The
spider was born in Glastonbur y and we wanted to start a process again.”
But starting from square one, scale was always something in the back
of the team’s mind. “We had got to the point where we needed something
much bigger,” stated Co-Founder and Creative Director Pip Rush.
“In our area we could have up to 50,000 people come through, with
many of them staying for a few hours. It meant that even the spider was
getting dwarfed in the space. I think one of our strongest points is that we
take over the sky, so from the start we had the idea of building a structure
that would accomplish this feat.”
The structure in question was an imposing crane that was transported
from the Bristol docklands. “We looked at a few potential structures for the
project, from sea-container lifters to various structures in Russia,” reflected
Rush. “Eventually we found this crane and started the conversation with
the harbour authorities. I think it took them a while to realise we were
serious and wanted to put this giant structure in a field in Somerset.”
The Arcadia team has collaborated with experts to help make its lofty
ambitious a reality, and Pangea was no different. “We had to bring in a lot ofARCADIA: PANGEA
GLASTONBURY