Glastonbury Festival 2009

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury, is a British performing arts festival, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts. For 2005, the enclosed area of the festival was over 900 acres (3.6 km²), had over 385 live performances, and was attended by around 150,000 people. In 2007, over 700 acts played on over 80 stages and the capacity expanded by 20,000 to 177,000. In 2011 UK Music published a report stating that Glastonbury Festival contributes over £100 million annually to the UK economy.
Overview
Glastonbury was heavily influenced by hippie ethics and the free festival movement in the early 1970s, beginning with the Isle of Wight Festival, which featured performances by The Who, amongst other artists. Afterwards, organiser Michael Eavis stated that he decided to host the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open air Led Zeppelin concert at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970 at the nearby Bath and West Showground in 1970. The festival retains vestiges of this tradition such as the Green Fields area which includes the Green Futures and Healing Field.