The Greenpeace field is a field for doing.

0:00Jessi Hello and welcome to GlastoCast, the unofficial Glastonbury Festival podcast. I'm Jessi, and today I'm remotely joined by Miguel and Rob.

0:16Rob Hi.

0:16Miguel Hey guys, Miguel here.

0:18Rob Good to see— oh, I say good to see you, I'm so used to saying good to see you. Good to hear you guys.

0:22Jessi Yeah, really good to hear you both too. So now it would normally be the time that we set out the episode for you, but this time I'm just starting a little bit different as we have a few things we need to say. So to start with, we wanted to really apologize for the silence. I know it's— we've had such an amazing response to the podcast, and we got a couple of episodes out after 2019's Glastonbury Festival, and we had all the promises in the world that we were going to bring you some more, but obviously things massively changed and we've ended up, you know, now we— here we are, so 10 months later, only just getting an episode out to you. So I wanted to explain a little bit further why that is. We actually met up in March and we recorded 2 episodes, and if you cast your minds back to March of 2020, what happened was the festival announced their lineup on one day and then 7 days later they announced that the festival was actually cancelled because of the pandemic that was spiralling at the time. Those 2 episodes that we recorded, they were literally done, uh, right in the middle of those 2 events. So between the lineup announcement and the cancellation, uh, and we were heavily optimistic at the time and we really focused on our excitement for 2020 and the 50th anniversary. And then when after the cancellation, it really didn't feel right to release those episodes. We were of course like really sad about the situation, as I'm sure all of you listening will have been as well. And like everyone at the time, we didn't know how the pandemic would play out. It was a time of uncertainty. And each of us, of course, we, you know, our work situations personally changed as well, and the world was turned upside down, as we all know. So a few people said to me that lockdown sounds like the perfect time for you to work on the podcast, which is true, but without the festival to motivate us, with the world changing so rapidly and our schedules not quite lining up, it's taken until now for us to really be able to get a plan together and pick it back up.

2:27Rob So I'm really pleased we're back doing this, guys, because I must admit it was a bit— I did feel a bit down about, you know, The 2 episodes that we recorded, we were really excited about them. We had that one, uh, basically completely lineup-focused where we talk about what we're excited. Unfortunately, obviously there's not really a great deal we can do with that, but hopefully, um, the second episode, which was where we interviewed a couple of food vendors, uh, we can put that on the back burner and, and make that one work as, as we move towards, uh, what we're all excited about, and that's getting back to Glastonbury.

2:57Miguel Absolutely right, Rob. Those are some really great interviews, so we're definitely going to be using them in a future episode. And speaking of upcoming episodes, now that we're back, we're really looking forward to putting together more content for the Glastonbury community. So we're going to be talking and discussing what's going to be a very different run-up to next year's festival. And I know we say this a lot, but we also really do want to hear from you. We would love to interview anyone who has a Glastonbury story to tell, so please get in touch. We have a remote recording system in place, or if you prefer, you can record something for us and email it to [email protected].

3:31Rob So for today, we're going to be having a quick catch-up As we haven't actually seen or spoken to each other since we got together back in March. So we'll be seeing what we've been up to and, you know, what— how each of us spent that what would have been the Glastonbury weekend. Then we have a very special guest for the main part of the episode. Today we're very lucky as Jessi and Miguel get to speak to Luke, who's the creative director at Greenpeace for the festival. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make this part of the interview, but Jessi and Miguel had a fantastic time talking to Luke. They asked him loads of good questions, and I cannot wait to hear how it goes. So, Miguel, uh, how have you been, mate, uh, since we last met? I say back in March, we did those 2 episodes. What have you been doing since then?

4:19Miguel Oh yeah, remember March? Remember reacting to the lineup?

4:23Rob I know, I'm just trying to think if I can remember all of it.

4:28Jessi Like, just thinking about it, one thing that just flashed into my mind— remember when the lineup came out and it was in that circle and everyone was stressing Because it was in a circle and that was all we had to worry about.

4:38Rob Oh, the good old days.

4:40Miguel And then they released sort of like a different poster. And it was also, why is it in alphabetical order now?

4:45Jessi Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.

4:47Rob Yeah, that is true. Because before someone pointed that out to me again, yeah, it all seemed very strange. You know, you kind of read the top ones, you think, oh, these are, you know, and then a big name would come up like a little bit further down.

4:58Miguel Well, but it was a different way of experiencing the first glimpse of the lineup, like surprises all over the poster.

5:04Jessi Absolutely.

5:05Rob It was a good way of making sure everybody did read from top to bottom rather than stopping halfway down, which I'm not saying I would do, but you know, I'm sure there would be people that would do that.

5:14Miguel So back to your question.

5:17Rob Yes. Sorry. Side note. Um, so yeah. Uh, what have you been up to? What, or in particular, what did you do on what would have been our Glastonbury weekend for 2020?

5:27Miguel Uh, well, first of all, I do remember checking the weather 2 weeks before, because, uh, the first 2 weeks is when you get into that forecast Uh, time, you know, now, now maybe you can predict what's going to happen in a way. It never works, but still.

5:43Luke No.

5:43Rob So, so yeah, you can be basic, can't you?

5:45Miguel 2 weeks before Glasto weekend, I start checking the weather, but, but I let, I let that go quite quickly. My friends kind of told me, Miguel, stop. Don't, don't you start.

5:56Rob Well, yeah, there's no point. Well, don't do it to yourself. Cause I, yeah, I mean, I, if I remember it, it started to be like really hot. And then maybe on the Friday, rain, and it cooled down a little bit.

6:07Miguel So some, some light showers, which I wouldn't mind at the festival, to be honest. I wouldn't mind any weather there.

6:13Rob No, especially, I mean, especially if it, if it is as hot as I, I remember it in the kind of on the Wednesday, Thursday.

6:19Miguel Yeah, but I mean, I think it's what Jessi mentioned at the beginning, like lockdown sounds the perfect time to work at GlastoCast. I think in the end, looking back now, uh, kind of, I think we already reaching a point where kind of we Rethinking who, what you'd done during the lockdown, who were you, what you were doing. And I think maybe there was a pressure or there wasn't a pressure, but maybe you should have learned yoga or learned how to bake, bake sourdough bread.

6:48Rob Start checking off things off that things I want to do list.

6:51Miguel Yeah. So I think, I think it's okay we didn't record episodes during the lockdown. I think that's what I'm trying to say.

6:57Rob No, that's—

6:58Miguel so for me, maybe it was really like a sort of a break. A forced break. So yeah, I didn't have anything special.

7:04Luke I don't have—

7:05Miguel that's what I have. I'm just rambling about it. I can tell you I did learn how to bake a banana bread. So that happened.

7:10Rob Well, that is one of my most favorite things as well. So maybe you'll have to make sure you get one of those ready.

7:16Miguel I'll be bringing to Glastonbury.

7:17Rob That's too far away. I'm thinking if we next time we get to record in person, I'm expecting there to be some banana loaf on the table there.

7:24Miguel Do you like the chocolate bits or walnuts? I'm joking.

7:28Rob Yes. All the different ones.

7:30Jessi All of the above.

7:31Miguel All right. So yeah. Yeah, so what was really hard for me this year is that, Jessi, you and I, we kind of talked about this in previous episodes, that we kind of were looking at 2020 of a way of how we were going to do some things differently. We always say that it doesn't matter how many times you've been to Glastonbury, every year is a different experience and you're always learning. And after some things that happened last year, I was kind of like, oh, I need to do this differently next year, 2020.

7:56Jessi Mm-hmm.

7:57Miguel So I was actually thinking, after being many years at Glastonbury, 2020, apart from being the 5th anniversary of being a special year for the festival, itself, I was looking at it as a turning point of my relationship with the festival. And yeah, so that was really tough for me during the weekend, how the cancellation of this year really got me in a different level in a way.

8:18Jessi I think that was it. I was kind of the same. You know, I had the glamping plans that I talked about last time in the last episode, and I was really sort of going, right, this year I'm going to do Glastonbury for me. Like, I'm going to do it for me and I'm going to do it in a kind of exploratory way. Like, I'm always going to, like, turn up to the festival and face it as if I've never been before and do all the things that I, you know, I'm going to sack off traditions.

8:46Miguel Exactly.

8:47Jessi Do this. I'm going to go and explore and I'm going to look at it with fresh eyes.

8:50Miguel Yes.

8:50Jessi Totally know what you mean, Miguel. That's exactly what I was going to do. So it's a bit of a weird one, isn't it, to think, oh, now we've got to do that next year.

8:56Miguel Yeah.

8:57Luke Yeah.

8:57Miguel It just felt that it was the perfect year. The combination of the celebration of the anniversary and maybe myself looking how to do some things differently and always learning and always having a different year at the festival.

9:10Jessi Yeah, this whole year is, is— let's just think of it as like a tiny blip. It's a pause, you know, just— we'll forget, you know, in 10 years' time we'll have forgot it happened. Well, maybe not. It'll be like the year that it'll be—

9:20Rob I don't think anyone's gonna forget, especially my friend, because it was going to be my first time kind of not going on my own really. I know, and obviously know, and lots of people and we meet up, but I was actually taking my friend and it was going to be his first ever Glastonbury. So obviously we were planning it for ages and I was telling him everything and he was listening in. And then it kind of just went, ah. But I said, I said to him, mate, you've, you've got your ticket. It's guaranteed. We don't have to worry about the stress of October. Let's just watch a few things on the TV. Uh, and rather than dwell on what's not, we'll, we'll look forward to what is. So Jessi, how have you been spending the lockdown? What have you been up to?

9:58Jessi Well, uh, I've been working from home since right at the beginning. Um, I actually got a new puppy, so that's been basically My entire kind of lockdown has been training my little puppy. That's so cute!

10:11Miguel Is his name Michael Eavis?

10:12Jessi No, no, no, no. I mean, I was trying to think of a Glasto name, but no, I've actually gone— her name's Mary. She's very cute. She's a little Pomeranian. But I'd wanted one for so long, and then lockdown came and I kind of went, I think I need to seize this opportunity, like a lot of people. But that means that's kind of kept me busy, and she's amazing, and we've been doing lots of training and it's been super fun. But obviously, as you guys know, like my entire summer revolves around festivals. Glastonbury is, you know, the main jewel in the crown of my, uh, festival summer. But obviously I'm used to spending every weekend at festivals over the summer. And I was thinking, I was saying to my friends, this is the first summer that I won't have gone to a festival since I was 16.

10:55Rob That's crazy. That is crazy.

10:56Jessi 16 years that I've always been to at least one festival in the summer. So it feels so weird.

11:01Rob I guess we all know at least where your tent is at the moment.

11:04Jessi Well, yeah, yeah, my tent is in my garage, probably getting Mouldy, maybe. Yeah, so it's been a bit of a weird one for me. I mean, in a way, I, you know, I don't want to go into this too much, but the one thing is that it's actually been really nice to— normally, as I said, every weekend I've got plans and somebody says to me, you know, oh, what are you doing? I'm like, well, you know, what are you doing at the weekend? It's kind of like, oh, how's October? You know, is my usual response. But it's actually been really nice to kind of get to a Friday And then somebody says like, oh, what, have you got any plans for the weekend? And I go, you know what, no, I don't. I'm gonna go to the park, I'm gonna get a bit of sun. Obviously this was, you know, towards the end of when lockdown had kind of eased off a bit and we were allowed to get outside more. But it's actually been nice to have that downtime, as, um, as you guys both said, to actually sort of not be burning the candle at both ends and being constantly doing things. So obviously I'm in a very lucky position that I've been able to enjoy it, but yes, um, it's been okay.

11:59Rob So what about the, the actual— what would have been the Glastonbury weekend? How did you find that?

12:04Jessi I'll be honest, I didn't find it— you know, it was actually quite a weird, sad week for me, obviously. I think, you know, seeing all the, like, social media memories— how horrible are they? You know, you get those memories going like, would have, would have set off to Glastonbury, do you know what I mean? Like, you get that one, the starting one that goes, oh, one year ago you were, you know, in my car convoy on the way to Glastonbury.

12:26Rob I suppose we all know what it feels like now to be the ones that don't get the tickets, you know, when everyone's posting about Glastonbury and you think, oh, I wish I was there.

12:34Jessi You say that, Rob, but actually this was a whole big conversation with my mates in that what was actually really the only thing that kind of saved me from it was that there was no FOMO. So yeah, nobody was at Glastonbury. Yeah, so I was, I was really sad, but at least I was thinking, at least I'm not home and everybody else is having a great time. Yeah, because like that, I, I realize now that if I don't get a ticket, I would be a broken person because I was almost a broken person. I think just the idea of being at home and seeing everything happening live would be awful. This year at least it was like, okay, well, at least nobody I know is at Glastonbury. Not just nobody I know, nobody at all. But you know what, the stuff on the BBC really did perk things up a bit. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting loads from it. I thought I'm gonna have seen most of these sets before, but there were a lot of sets on there that, you know, I'd never seen. I didn't even know that they were recorded, you know, some of them were really old. Some of them, we're talking like early '90s, that they had these like incredible recordings of that I'd never seen before. So, so that did help, I think, being able to, you know, feel a, feel a bit of the magic from watching it. And, and these sets that you maybe have never seen before, or going in— even I went into some of 2019 sets that I didn't get to go and see, or I didn't think were going to be very good, and I thought, oh, let's go and watch them on the BBC and see. So it was a nice distraction. Obviously it wasn't like being at the festival.

13:58Rob No, and I don't think anyone would have suggested it would be. I mean, But in terms of the coverage was fantastic, wasn't it? So I mean, would you say you watched more memorable sets in terms of the ones that you went to see, or did you try and check out more sets that you haven't, or was it pretty even balance?

14:13Jessi Uh, it's probably even balance, but I tried to do more that I hadn't seen, ones that I hadn't actually even seen on the BBC before, because that's the other thing. A lot of the ones that I miss, I get home and I go, oh, I missed that, I'm gonna watch it on the BBC. So I tried to pick up ones that I just hadn't seen at all, but I think some of the compilation, you know, I think on the Friday and Saturday they did like at 8 o'clock or something, they had one that was the legends and stuff. So they had compilation programmes on the BBC. They were really good.

14:41Rob Yeah. And of course it wasn't just the BBC either, was it? There was a lot of different things going on.

14:47Miguel Did you—

14:47Jessi Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were loads of live streams going on, which were really, really cool. There was also Lost Horizon from Shangri-La the week after, which was really exciting.

14:55Rob There was a lot from Glade as well. I mean, I must admit, I probably spent more time on the social media side of it than on the BBC personally. But yeah, great stuff. There just seemed to be so much content.

15:05Jessi Did you watch the bits where they did like the live from the farm and it was like Lauren Laverne and a few other people and they were like stood in front of the empty pyramid with a few cows?

15:14Luke Oh really?

15:14Rob I'll be honest, I, I didn't.

15:16Miguel Did you not do that? No, I missed them as well.

15:18Jessi Oh, did you not? Well, they did a couple of like live segments on BBC and they were stood there showing the empty field. It was almost like I needed to see that the fields were actually empty and just that, you know.

15:30Miguel Yeah.

15:31Jessi So that was really good. But the week itself, I mean, me and my friends just shared lots of photos and talked about what would have been, and we, we tried to make a nice time of it. I saw a couple of friends on the Saturday night for a barbecue in their garden, you know, sort of social distance kind of barbecue, just to— I think I needed to be with Glasto people, if you know what I mean. So I absolutely just felt like I needed to be around at least a couple of other people who knew my pain, you see what I mean? So that was nice. We managed to kind of like sit in her garden and then like she had a TV set up just outside so we could watch, you know, some of the sets and stuff.

16:08Miguel You took the ciders out of the fridge the night before so you'd have your warm—

16:12Rob Make sure they were warm.

16:15Jessi No, I thought we actually made use of the luxury of having ice and things, which was probably a bit inauthentic, but you know.

16:21Rob Definitely.

16:22Jessi Yeah, so not the fun, not the, you know, it was never going to be the same as being there, obviously, and it was never going to be a joyful weekend, but I think we made the most of it. And, you know, we, you know, it was really nice to reminisce with friends, but it's still quite a sad, sad affair. And how about you, Rob? You've heard from us too. How has your year been? So far, has any— as much changed for you? And then also tell me about your Glastonbury at-home weekend.

16:48Rob My Glastonbury at-home experience. Well, yeah, it's been very strange for me. I mean, obviously things were all building in excitement, and when we last saw each other back in March, and we were really positive and we were kind of, you know, geeing each other on to stay positive regardless of whether or not deep down we knew what was coming. But so I was really loving that vibe, and obviously, you know, it didn't go as well as it could have done. And for me, as, as kind of lockdown came in and, you know, things, processes and procedures and all that got worse, actually I got busier and busier at work to a point where I, I didn't even have the Glastonbury weekend off in the end. So I, I didn't really feel like it was a Glastonbury weekend for me. Um, whether it— not even to a point where, you know, those years where you— well, you probably haven't experienced it for a while, but the years when you don't get a ticket. I mean, I've had a couple of those, and, and I, and I almost insist on working those weekends. So that I'm absolutely as far away from the action as I could possibly be.

17:47Jessi Makes sense.

17:47Rob So the kind of the way I took it was I cancelled my leave. I went back to work, did what I know best, and that's just kind of get my head down and work hard. I did dip into the coverage a little bit because, like I said, I was trying to keep that positive vibe going. So I watched a few of the bits and pieces. Essentially, one thing that I thought I was going to do, and this comes back onto what you were saying a bit earlier, Miguel, about whether or not you should find whether you're going to, I don't know, learn 12 languages languages because you're not going to work. I, I actually went, got my hand back into DJing and, uh, started doing like, uh, uh, live streams for friends and, and family and doing it. Yeah, doing a little bit of DJing. Yeah. So—

18:29Jessi Wait, wait, wait, Rob DJ?

18:30Rob Not quite Rob DJ. So it is— Rob is not different things.

18:34Jessi Rob is a DJ. Rob is a DJ.

18:37Rob Rob is a DJ. Very much so. That's the plan anyway, uh, which brings me on perfectly obviously play on, you know, the faithless god is a DJ thing. I'm not suggesting I'm a god or anything, or that in fact I'm very good at it, but Rob is a DJ works perfectly. So, um, and yeah, it started off as a bit of fun and it was something that I used to do, you know, many years ago, but picking it up has been brilliant and it's been the perfect excuse, um, to be, you know, just playing music. And yes, we've not been— it's not been in a live environment at all, it's literally me stood in my kitchen, but, you know, using social media in various different ways that make it possible to do it, because not all the, not all the platforms, uh, are possible. But there's that live— that you can do live chats at the same time. So I've been getting in touch with a lot of the people that I would have been seeing at, uh, at Glastonbury anyway. So there's been lots of chat going on in the group chat, and we've been doing all bits and pieces in it. And you know what, it was really, really, really enjoyable.

19:31Jessi It's really cool, Rob, because like you said last year that, you know, you had a really music year last year.

19:37Rob I did, yes, I did.

19:38Jessi After the festival, you're like, I've had a really music year and it's really kind of inspired me to get back into music.

19:43Rob So exactly that.

19:44Jessi It's amazing that you've, you've found the time now.

19:46Rob I've followed through on it and I've jumped in with both feet as well, and I'm not going to stop.

19:50Miguel So, Rob, so, so a question for you. If you could DJ at Glastonbury, which stage would you pick?

19:55Jessi Oh, great.

19:58Rob Oh, um, gosh, that is tough.

20:00Jessi Do you know what?

20:01Rob I think I would— I'd pick Glade. I'd pick Glade.

20:04Jessi Glade? Oh yeah, yeah.

20:05Rob I love that. I love that stage. I just love the environment in there. A lot of like my favorite DJs that I've seen over the past few years have been in there.

20:13Miguel So follow-up question. So you're gonna DJ at The Glade. At what time of the day or night do you see yourself being able to play now?

20:22Rob Probably, I don't know, 11 AM on a Wednesday or something. Soundcheck, that's it. I'll have my phone just to, you know, make sure everybody brings a glass and we'll make it a bit louder. But, you know, who knows? Who knows?

20:45Miguel Moving on to the last part of this episode, we are very excited to share with you a conversation that Jessi and I had with Luke, who's the creative director for Greenpeace at Glastonbury Festival. It was such a pleasure to talk to him and get some insights on all the hard work that happens behind the scenes to put out a fantastic field at the festival. Hello, Luke. Thank you so much for joining us today.

21:11Luke Hi, Miguel. How you doing?

21:12Miguel I'm doing great, mate. Thanks. Thanks again. We've been trying to get this interview done for some time now, but now that we have our remote setup good to go, we can finally have a chat.

21:23Luke I mean, I've been having all sorts of problems with— it's just during COVID all my tech has been gradually breaking. And it's been a struggle, struggle, struggle to keep online, but I think I'm back in business now.

21:33Jessi I think we've all had those problems.

21:34Miguel Yeah, it's always when you need it most. Anyway, great. So Greenpeace is such an integral part of Glastonbury Festival, so we're really excited to learn more about this relationship. But first, if you don't mind, let's hear from you. Who are you? What's your Glastonbury story? How long have you been going to the festival? If you used to go as a punter or you always worked for Greenpeace, just give us the rundown.

21:56Luke Okay, uh, I, I've worked for Greenpeace for an alarming amount of time, um, on and off, probably for like 20 years, I'm gonna say.

22:04Jessi Wow.

22:05Luke I, I used to sail for them, so I spent 8 or 9 years sailing all over the world, buccaneering, trying to, you know, like, impact on, on environmental degradation, sort of slow, slow it, slow the tide of it. And then subsequent to that, I came to work in London with Greenpeace for the last 12 years. And I either— so I'm the creative director of Greenpeace at Glastonbury, and that's the sort of project that I run, and I do some other events for them. And then I also sort of like plan and implement their direct actions and sort of stunts and interventions for them in my other spare time. I think it's trying to think like when the first time I went to Glastonbury was. I think I was 15. Yeah. And my trip entirely depended on my brother passing his driving test, which was like the week before Glastonbury. And he did pass it.

22:51Jessi He did pass it.

22:51Luke And we drove down from Lincoln where I grew up, a small kind of rural place. So some people say Midlands, some people say north on the east coast. And we drove, I think it was like 7 hours in a yellow 2CV. And I'll be honest, I'm old enough that we jumped the fence when we got there. I think we paid some guy and went through his hole or something. I can't remember.

23:09Jessi Love it.

23:13Miguel But then you kept going to Glastonbury after that, or?

23:17Luke Yes, well, I went a few more times, but when I was 18, I 19, I upped sticks and left the UK and sort of like went traveling, and I didn't come back again until I was 30. So I had a fairly massive interlude in my Glastonbury experience. But when I got back to the UK, I did start going again, more or less when I first started working with Greenpeace in London. So I think I've done the last 12 festivals, give or take, apart from 2011 when one of my children was born and I wasn't able to go.

23:47Jessi Okay.

23:47Luke But I did have the honor, dubious honor, of My paternity leave finished on the Monday morning after the show, so on the Tuesday I drove in to do the de-rig, but I'd missed everything else.

24:00Jessi Oh, that's the commitment. I love that.

24:02Luke That's commitment.

24:04Jessi Wait, you did— you did— you think you've done the last 12, and then you had like a 12-year gap before then?

24:09Luke Yeah, something like that.

24:10Jessi And then you did 3 before that. That's— yeah, that's a pretty impressive, you know, I guess, like, Glasto history. That's— yeah, I'm impressed by that.

24:17Miguel But then from sailing with Greenpeace to creative director at Glastonbury, this was something you kind of chased inside the organization, or it kind of happened naturally?

24:27Luke It's like a natural progression, Miguel, because I sort of— I mean, I like to think that— so I was always an activist, I was always an environmental campaigner, I was always a festival head. And then I, you know, like when you work with Greenpeace, get an opportunity to develop your skill set and get resourced in a certain way that you're not in the grassroots. And I think a lot of protest work is basically around creative comms. It's like you're taking issues and trying to find, come up with interventions that highlight them and communicate them in a way that people find accessible and easy to understand.

24:59Jessi Yeah.

24:59Luke And that's kind of also what we do on the field at Glastonbury. So it's kind of, it's a natural progression. I still see what we do at Glastonbury as a form of action, basically as a form protest and intervention. It's communication, it's taking challenging issues and breaking them down into simple forms and making them fun and interactive, you know. So yeah, it wasn't a deliberate choice, but I'm pretty glad that I landed on my feet every step of the way.

25:23Miguel Excellent. It's really great to hear your story. Well, let's just— let's jump in then into the relationship of Greenpeace with the festival. Greenpeace also just turned 50. So how did the relationship start? How did it evolve throughout the years?

25:36Luke So Greenpeace is turning 50, some conjecture about whether it's this year or next year. Glastonbury has its 50th birthday this year, sadly been cancelled. I think, I mean, I'm old enough but I wasn't there. It was 1991 that Michael Eavis wrote a letter to Greenpeace asking if they wanted to become involved in the festival and they did. And a guy called Bob Wilson, who's a really interesting, serious character, he went down to meet with Michael and then he he got us involved, and ever since we've had a sort of different and growing relationship with the festival. I think at the beginning, I think I could be wrong, I think that we had something to do with the gates.

26:11Rob Mm-hmm.

26:13Luke And now of course we have like our own field, which is like a festival within the festival, and we have like a couple of little other bits and bobs that we do about the place, and we're sort of fully integrated into the festival family. And then we have the presence along with Oxfam and WaterAid of the joint charities, which is something that that we really enjoy participating in. I don't know all of the crazy early years stories. I mean, I have been told them, but I'm not going to repeat them in case I'm wrong. But we're pretty proud of what we offer there now, and it's an amazing opportunity for us to communicate and outreach and participate. And it's great for, like, our volunteers to be involved in.

26:47Jessi So next year, that means 2021, if you've got the dates right, then that'll be your 30th kind of birthday of the relationship, I guess.

26:54Luke Jo, I hadn't even considered that, but that is true. It will be our 30th birthday. And many, and you know, and it's just such an amazing thing. Those numbers are amazing. So it's like, I personally find it such an incredible thing to be part of. It's such a privilege, an honor to be connected to this kind of, you know, inputted into this kind of massive cultural, globally iconic, you know, like relevant kind of happening.

27:18Miguel Jess, I think maybe you just kickstarted some changes on the planning for next year now.

27:22Jessi Yeah, yeah. They'll be like, oh, 30, I've got to do something about that.

27:25Luke Yeah, it's like, love that. Slide that in there somewhere. We need a big birthday cake, you know. It was a shame to miss. I mean, obviously, like, there's been a lot going on and it's like there's been a lot of tragedy and difficulty in the world. But it— I mean, I really felt Glastonbury wasn't— when it was happening or when it wasn't happening, I mean, I was really like, oh, I really want to be there. Like, where's all my family and friends?

27:45Jessi You know? Yeah, we had a lot of Glasto blues, you know, on that weekend. It was difficult, wasn't it, Miguel?

27:50Miguel Oh, absolutely.

27:52Jessi I'm sure it's even harder for you guys who've worked there every year. It must just feel so weird to not be there.

27:57Luke Do you know what? I just think the thing about Glastonbury is that So many people are involved in making it happen that you don't, you know, you don't get to claim to be like, you know, like, oh, it's worse for me because I like work there. It's like, it's so many volunteers that turn up, and there's so many, so many of the kind of things that happen at the event are totally dependent on the protagonists, all the festivalgoers, you know. It's like, yeah, we are one like massive kind of seething mass of Glastonbury. It's not like an us and them thing going on.

28:22Jessi I love that. I love that. I'm glad you've made me feel a bit more, you know, I've, I've had a ticket for 10 years, and it makes me feel better that it's not like, no, we're the crew, we're more important.

28:33Luke Don't feel like that. I'll be honest, the only time I ever feel like that, and this is a sort of psychological thing rather than this, it's like on the Wednesday when everybody comes in. I just feel a bit, oh, we've been here for ages and it's all been so special, and now for us coming and it's going to get dirty. Work so hard to create this kind of beautiful thing, and it's kind of, you know, it's meant to get dirty, it's meant to kind of like be ruined by Sunday. But just, there's just a kind of hour or two, just like, oh no, don't touch it, don't touch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:06Jessi I guess it's just like up on the, up on the valley, like, you know, just watching people come in going, oh, here we go, it looks so nice yesterday.

29:12Luke But, you know, give it, give it until Wednesday evening, we're just like, yeah, this is amazing, you know, this is— because it is such an incredible thing to— I mean, when I, I mean, I'm there for like 6 weeks and I'm certainly not the the longest person on site. It's an incredible thing to arrive to a green field or like a collection of green fields and then set to working, and then you see over the tree line other people's scaffolding starts to appear or stages going up, and we don't really leave because it's so busy and immersed in what it is that we're doing on our field. You don't necessarily check in too much, and then one evening, you know, halfway through the build, you might think, I'm just gonna go for a walk around, and like bang, it's all this kind of amazing stuff happening elsewhere.

29:48Jessi It's amazing. Like, one year I'm gonna get there for the build and I want to see it. Not all of it, but you know, it just— that's the one thing we always say all of our podcasts is that, like, you know, it's all good being a punter, but like being there to see the build and sort of watch it go up must be so beautiful.

30:04Luke I think the incredible thing about the build is that we— I mean, certainly on our field, and I think the other fields are the same— it's like there's always new people and new creative ideas, but there's also kind of a lot of people returning from previous years. So we have our own culture and community and family. So like in my field, we only really recruit new build crew through friends of the current build crew, and we have this kind of— we have our own culture of kind of like People come into it and they're part of it, obviously sort of mutually supportive, and then all these freelancers pick up work in other places during the year. It is good to be part of the build, but I must also say, in case anyone's listening that wants to get involved, it's also really good to be part of the de-rig. Yeah, shouldn't, shouldn't just run off after the show. It's like you've got to stay and complete the mission.

30:46Jessi Yes.

30:48Luke That's your emotional journey. Arrive to a green field, build a city, have a massive party, do some political campaigning, you know, like see some incredible artists and acts, and then like return it to a clean, beautiful, pristine farmland again at the end and everything packed up neat, ready for the next year.

31:01Jessi I always think like maybe it— I don't know if I'd feel quite sad like packing it all away. I'd be like, oh, here we go. But yeah, you're right, when you return it to a green field, it's sort of, let's say, that full circle feeling. I like that. So we, we have quite a few people who, who listen to our podcast, you know, when we, uh, before the 2019 festival when we first started, and we created like 6 episodes that were like a guide for people who'd never been to Glastonbury before. Loads of people got back to us and said love this, this is brilliant, and it really sort of made me feel, you know, just more prepared for my first Glastonbury.

31:33Luke Sure.

31:33Jessi Um, obviously there's gonna— there was gonna be a load more people that were gonna have their first festival this year, now that's been postponed to next year. But my question to you is, you know, we're talking about Greenpeace here and the fact that you have your own field, which is awesome. You have your own area in the festival, and as you mentioned, it's known as one of the many festivals within festivals. So if nobody— if somebody's never been to Glastonbury before and never been to the Greenpeace field, You know, what, what can they find there? Why would they want to come check it out? I mean, obviously they can look on the lineup and see, oh, there might be a band there that I want to see, but what other things do you guys have going on?

32:07Luke Yeah, I mean, we— it's like a personal philosophy of mine, and it kind of fits with— probably because I'd like to— if you cut me open, I'm like a stick of Rocky. I say Greenpeace, but it's like we're a field for doing. So that you can, you can come and have a shower, you can come and go on a climbing wall. We've got a giant 6.5-meter slide you can go down. We've got a skate ramp with lessons on it. So these are all— there's all sorts of things you can come and do for free, so you're not just like passively consuming the festival as you wander around. And then we also have the stage, it's like pretty impressive lineups these days. And then we have cafe, a bar, there's some giant sort of artworks and sculpture installations. But basically what we see our role as— and then of course I mustn't forget that we have— we're a 24-hour field, right? So then we have the Rave Tree in the evening. That's like a 20—

32:52Jessi Mmm.

32:53Luke 4.5-meter-high steel tree that the canopy is made out of waste plastic and so on and so forth. We're pretty pleased with that as well. So we have some pretty kicking parties later in the evening. But in the daytime, you know, we try to sort of phase our field. So in the, in the morning, you can have a shower, get a coffee and a pastry, maybe read the paper or sit down and like talk to one of our communicators about kind of like issues that are prevalent to you, like have a look around at some of the exhibits that we've got. And for the rest of the daytime, we sort of try to divide the field into a couple of areas. So we have what's called destination zones. That's a stage and the kind of fun and the activity things that are happening. And then towards the back of the field, we have a kind of quieter area with art and like the opportunity to do screen printing of like t-shirts or talk to volunteers from Greenpeace about either what it's like to be an activist or what, you know, about climate change, what it is that you could do to help. So we— and also I must say it's different every year because we pick a different theme and narrative every year and then refresh the field to represent what the issues are that we want to talk about. And we use our features as mechanisms of communication. So for example, the slide, for example, that was born in a year that we wanted to talk about overfishing and sort of the problems of the oceans. So we built a life-size supertrawler, like a 64-meter supertrawler in the middle of the field and had a nightclub inside it.

34:12Jessi Yeah, I was going to say that. I remember the boat.

34:13Luke Yeah, it had a nightclub inside it, had a stage, you could go on the You could go up it and look out over the whole festival and had like audio installations and stuff. It was pretty fly. And but at the back of it, it had a little hole and it was called the Bicatch Slide. And if you went in this little hole, and I think actually this is like one of the things I say to people, it's like, look, when you're at Glastonbury, look for like the small hidden openings because they lead to some of the kind of best stuff.

34:34Miguel Yeah.

34:35Luke But it was a small little hole that said Bicatch Inlet. And if you went into it, then you got treated to this kind of incredible experience, which is you crawled through these tunnels. There's lots of electronic triggers with lights and sound. And then you climbed up inside the scaffolding. It was done out like a kind of giant children's soft play. And when you got to the top of the scaffolding, you came out on the top of the ship, you dressed up on top of the trawler, you dressed up as a fish, and you went down the slide. And that was a mechanism. So you basically went on this sort of digital journey of being a fish, and then you went down a slide. And we believe in the idea that if you can make people feel something, they're more likely to remember it than if you just tell them it or show them it. All we wanted to show people was that there's a thing called bycatch that comes from super trawlers, and it's bad. Because it's festival vibes here. We don't get like too carried away and too detailed, too down and heavy on anyone. But we hope, we hope that later when they get home and the word bycatch comes up in the newspaper, or they get an email from Greenpeace, they might actually read it and engage with it. So we sort of try to lead people into like these issues rather than like ramming them down their throat, because come on, man, we're at a festival.

35:32Jessi Yeah, you know, you just know that some guy in the morning has just sat around a tent with his friends and they'll be like, what did you get up to yesterday, mate? He's like, oh, do you know what? what, I went up to this hole in a boat and then like crawled through this thing and I climbed to the top of this ship and like dressed as a fish and went down the slide. And his mates are probably like, what?

35:52Luke Because the thing is that the beautiful thing about Glastonbury in particular, but kind of festivals in general, is that you can kind of get people out of their comfort zone and you can get people to, you know, because they're like feeling good, having a nice time, so you could get them to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do, such as dress as a fish and go down a Super slide, you know.

36:08Miguel Amazing.

36:09Jessi Yeah, I love that. I love that. So did you, did you design that? Because that was going to be sort of my next question, is that, you know, you as creative director, you know, we know that you have like themes every year and then you base the field, you know, the field around that. So I remember, you know, you've got the polar bear and things like that and there's things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you, you know, do you design that every year? So you get given the theme and then you go, right, okay, what we're going to do this this year we're going to build a boat, or we're going to do this. Is that, is that your job? And then if so, how long before the festival, like, how long do you have to design that? I'd love to know.

36:41Luke I mean, firstly, I've got to say, like, I definitely don't do it on my own. Yeah, like, there's a whole team.

36:46Jessi Yeah, of course.

36:47Luke I work with— I have like a team of freelancers that I work with. I've got art directors, lighting directors, like a guy, like a bar manager, I don't know, like a chef that runs a cafe, it's like, like an architect. There's loads of like a build manager So all these kind of really important critical people, you know, we have to run the campsite, that's, you know, we need 500 volunteers basically to run the field. So I definitely don't do it on my own, but what I do is I sort of bring forward the ideas and design the processes that lead us to where we want to be. And I curate, like, I mean, my personal involvement is I kind of curate the stuff and I add the Greenpeace element and make sure that the politics are right and stuff. And I'll be honest, we're still trying to work ourselves to what we've actually— that's what we've been doing during COVID yeah, is writing processes It was like pretty boring stuff, but it was like, right, let's write down once and for all how it is that we do it. We're trying to write a manual basically so we can hand it over to other people if we ever needed to, not that we want to. And then of course, the other thing about the Greenpeace feel, of course, is we have this slight advantage that we get a huge amount of support from different people and different companies, like individuals in other companies. So all of the stage lights, we might be kind of gifted in kind by a hire company because they want to support Greenpeace.

37:57Jessi Mm-hmm.

37:59Luke The tree is built for— I mean, it wasn't free. We spent some money on it, but it was built by a guy that really wanted to help as a big engineering company comes down to help us put it up. So that's one of the reasons that we punch above our weight is we have all these different massive creative industry inputs to bring forward the product. And that really helps because we have to do it, obviously we're a charity, so we're doing what we do on a shoestring basis.

38:24Jessi Absolutely.

38:25Luke And we want to maximize that. We get a really handsome donation from the festival, Michael Eavis, most years. We want to maximize that by spending not too much on the field.

38:33Jessi Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, that's great that you get loads of people sort of pitching in. And obviously, you know, I know that if I was an artist, you know, I'd definitely want to be involved in the Greenpeace field over anywhere else. Definitely.

38:44Luke I think that we're just lucky to have some of the people that come and work with us that we do. But so are all the other areas at the festival, because I certainly don't think that we're unique in the sense that people want to come and do stuff for cheap. during Glastonbury. I think the whole of the festival, like I said before, is constructed on all the people that are there, and pretty much everybody that's working at Glastonbury, right down, right from the kind of headline act to, you know, me, is taking a hit on their wages just to be part of it, yeah, just to pull it off. And then in turn, like, all of that kind of generosity, that's what's enabling the festival to give this kind of like massive financial philanthropic kind of gestures to like all the charities that it supports. So like all the crew are involved in sort of generating the wealth that's like distributed to good causes from the festival.

39:31Jessi Yeah.

39:32Miguel Amazing. Would you say, is it fair to say the biggest challenge will be to find the balance between providing this festival experience but also creating engagement for activism?

39:40Luke Yeah, that's absolutely right, Miguel. It's like how far— so that's quite interesting actually from a creative point of view. Like since I've been like heading up that side of things, we've been on a journey basically So we wanted to build an audience and then we wanted to communicate with that audience. So I think in order to build it, it's taken a few years. Yes. In order to build it, we've had to sort of deprioritize campaigning a tiny little bit and prioritize our finite resources and fire our resources into kind of production values and to like building sort of slightly bigger set and to kind of like making it a bit more kind of exciting and visually stimulating. And now that we've done that, we've got the rave tree and we've got kind of— we can retain an audience over the full duration of the festival. We feel like, you know, now we're really going to start back at the politics of it. So, you know, we've like really developed ourselves. So we try to kind of— it's like a— we're as much on a journey as the people that we're kind of trying to engage with so that we can get to this kind of balance of like festival fun, culturally relevant, politically relevant, and then generating activism. This year, the cancelled year's kind of theme, and hopefully it'll be our theme next year, was like, if you ask us, I often get asked as someone who works for Greenpeace, it's like, what is the thing that I can do to help save the climate? And whereas in the past you might have answered, do your recycling, change your light bulbs, so on and so forth. Now I think we're in a climate emergency, we've got literally no time to resolve it. So I think the answer is get out there and take action, get out there and protest basically, because the solutions exist at a macro scale. So governments corporations, they've got the solutions up their sleeve and they just need to be forced to deploy them. You know, it's like, I never want to like drag people down and depress them while they're at a festival, but at the same time, like, we are there to communicate this kind of critical, urgent, important message. We just try to do it in a, in a fun, lighthearted way and let people take— and also be there and be available for like deeper and more meaningful conversations if that's what people want to do. Because I think the amazing thing about Glastonbury is you have all these different audiences. You know, you've got your kind of— you've got people like me that when I was 15, when I first went down there, just like, ah, And then you've got like the me now that's like pretty sedate and that wants to go around into like green crafts and like make something or whatever. So it's like, you know, this is all these different people. They've got these kind of younger audiences. We're trying to attract like a more diverse audiences through like our stage programming, you know, like, so like, yeah, it's all to play for really.

42:00Miguel Amazing. Well, I think you're doing a great job, I must say, in finding this balance. But that's what I mean.

42:07Rob Yeah.

42:08Luke But it is tricky because if you get it wrong, you just just gonna turn people off, and that's not what we're there to do. Yeah, we do— I do that in other ways throughout the year.

42:17Jessi So look, uh, in, in the Greenpeace Fields, like, what, um, obviously you guys are doing everything possible to ensure that, you know, you run the field in a, in a very green way. You know, the showers that are open to the public, and I believe they're solar. Um, but so apart from that, what, what do you actually have within the field to make it particularly sustainable?

42:38Luke I mean, there's no sort of beating about the bush. Like, a 5-day temporary event is a difficult thing to make fully sustainable, but there are nonetheless like a bazillion things that we can be doing to drive down the, the impacts of the event and to make it sustainable. So we, for example, and all the other areas at Glastonbury, to be fair to them, and the festival itself, we're not super minded of this. We have a design philosophy in my area where we have kind of thought through the entire process from start to finish And that means when we— so we come up with an idea of a thing that we want to do, that we want to make, and then we determine what we're going to make it of and how we're going to make it. So we use, for example, a lot of scaffolding because that's like a hireable item. So you're not like taking anything virgin and using it and throwing it away.

43:20Jessi Right.

43:21Luke And then we clad the scaffolding in timber, which we then decorate and paint or put paste-ups on. And that sheet material, we work everything out in dimensions around plywood. It's a bit boring for people. It's like, so sheet of plywood is 8 by 4. So we design everything in 8-foot and 4-foot dimensions. that we try to cut as little wood as we can. And then every year, at the end of the year, we can stack it all back up, we put it into storage, and then we get it out the next year and you use it again. And then we also think about how to store things. So how much stuff can you fit on a van? How do you cut something to make sure that you're maximizing the use of that journey?

43:55Jessi Yeah.

43:56Luke So I have, or we have on site at the moment as an area, as a field, we have 4 40-foot articulated lorry trailers full of stuff, and we have 150 giant pallets of stuff, all of which is either materials, structures, like actual things. So the tree, it's there, yeah, like it lives in the truck, it comes out, we put it back up, we decorate it again, put different lights on it. So the kind of idea is that you basically put the same field up every year for the— for a few years, but you just make it look completely different with your scenic and you're messaging. Or you can pick stuff up and move it around the field, but you're never actually really changing everything all at once because that's such a kind of huge material input. And then we, we look at like vehicle journeys, we look at like, we've got like vegan catering, we try to run as much of the stuff on solar as we can. And then when we can't, we look for it like not burn, to not burn too much diesel on the jennies. I mean, it runs through everything that we do, it runs through everything that the festival does, you know. So we I don't know, like our cafe is a really interesting example. So our cafe, we try to source all of the food from within 40 miles of the festival site where possible, and we try to pick it all up on the journey that the chefs make from London. So they try to drive through, and then the stuff that we like, stuff where we couldn't, so like, I don't know, olive oil, we, we went to Palestine and bought— we didn't actually go, we bought it from Palestine and it got delivered by sailing ship.

45:22Jessi Wow.

45:22Luke So, so we're trying to like be— I mean, it's not to be holier than thou, it's to try to demonstrate that it's him that it is possible to run a business in this way and still turn a profit. And that's something that we're gonna— that the chefs are gonna feed back in kind of symposiums to the catering industry, for example. So, you know, we try to use the field as a petri dish for like other like pretty tangential like things that like places that we can make a difference in the world. It's a constant kind of conundrum how to make it more and more sustainable. But we like— I mean, you look at Shangri-La, they, they're building everything out of waste, basically. They're smashing it. You know, it's difficult, but we are constantly minded about it. I mean, obviously, that's like our primary motivation is to live sustainably, and that's for all the crew that are attracted to work for us, because I mean, like, most of them are playing on like voluntary or semi-voluntary basis because they're like backing the cause, basically backing the cause. So we have this kind of— we have like a whole philosophy, and we— I mean, I have like a storage unit where I spend all year kind of collecting other bits of scenic salvage And then in our design process, we sort of take a look at what have we got. Okay, we've got Perspex, we've got a load of Perspex off that guy that was throwing it away. Brilliant, let's make light boxes, you know. So this year the field will have a load of light boxes on it with words on it because that's what we found in the skip, basically. That's what we're gonna make it out of. We do have like some new material inputs, but as little as possible.

46:41Jessi It's amazing. I just love the level of detail you go into, and like, you know, especially, you know, just things like the olive oil and the The chef's driving down from London. I love that.

46:49Luke Yeah, you know, the showers, they are— we get loaned a wood pellet boiler to heat the water.

46:57Miguel Yeah.

46:57Luke And then we source sustainable wood pellets. And then now we're thinking like maybe actually that's kind of not, not, not, not fit for purpose anymore. So we're looking at— we are now looking at solar and like, uh, what they call ground source heat pumps. But obviously then we need to go to Michael Eavis and be like, Michael, we need to dig a massive hole in your field. Um, but he's always super supportive. Yeah, because he himself is like a massive environmentalist. Yeah, like I mean the things that I mean, okay, it's a dairy farm, yeah, but the things that he's done on his dairy farm are like totally amazing. He's got like a methane collector from like the cow dung, yeah, which is then used to like power the farm. But you know, like, I mean, that guy is like all in, you know. He was like totally early adopter of solar panels, you know. I mean, I'll give you an example. Last year we went to him and went, Michael, we want to install a sort of semi-permanent sculpture in the field and we want to connect it to your beehives via the internet and we want to turn it into kind of live, like audiovisual, like immersive kind of thing. Kind of like experience that people are going to like sit inside the sculpture and like the audio tricks. Like with this artist called Wolfgang Buttrich, totally amazing guy. And it's like all— and the activity of the beehive is going to trigger like all the audio and visuals in the— in this kind of area. And he was just like, yeah, totally amazing, just get on with it. And he gave us— he gave us like so much support, you know. Like we get like— well, people don't understand about, or maybe isn't recognized or shouted loud enough about Glastonbury, is that at the very, very core it are some farmhands, just this team of incredible hard-working farmers, and they spend some of the year farming and the rest of the year just putting in giant logistics for the festival. But what they also do is like they build sculptures, right? I mean, I had a hand in building it and I had a crew that built it. It was an incredible amount of support from basically the local kind of agricultural community because we need chainsaws and sticks and we need like a mini digger with an auger bit to drill like 8,000 And like, they're just like, Michael's just like, yeah, I'll send the farms down. And to be honest, I mean, at one point they said to me, like, it would be better if you weren't here, we just do it on our own. I totally appreciate that.

49:01Miguel Yeah, I mean, even, even after years of going to Glastonbury, I'm still amazed about the size of it, and I cannot even grasp what goes into the planning and building the festival every year.

49:10Rob It's just amazing.

49:11Luke I don't know if there's any one single person that really knows knows like everything about how to do it. It's just too complicated. There used to be a guy called Phil Miller who very sadly, um, passed away, but I think he's about as close as ever come to really knowing everything. I mean, apart from Michael and Emily, obviously. But I mean, you know, I mean, you're building a city in the countryside, you're putting in sanitation, you're running water, you are running an entire power distribution network.

49:39Miguel Yeah.

49:40Luke You've got medical facilities, you've got safety facilities that need checking. It's just an endless amount of stuff to support people in this alternative world, almost just to prove that you can. I don't mean to prove that it's physically possible to build a city in the countryside. I mean, tragically, that's determined endlessly when people are forced off the land or whatever globally. But I mean, It's just the idea that you can, you can set forth and build an alternative society and an alternative model, and you can for a few days demonstrate that actually, you know what, it doesn't have to be like this. There are other ways of being. And I'm not suggesting that we all spend the rest of our lives like, you know, drinking cider and staggering around in a field. But I'm just, but I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know, like the compassion, the kindness, the empathy, the unity, the fun, you know, like it's— that's what life could be like, you know. And it could be more, you know, um, fairer, you know, more equal, you know, greener. That's, that's, that's the world we're pining for, right? And I just feel like Glastonbury is like a kind of annual— you know, there's a couple of other things in the world, but it's like an annual reminder that it's possible if you just cling on to your dreams and go at it every year like Michael Eavis does.

50:54Jessi Amazing.

50:55Miguel Wow, really well said. I got a bit emotional. Sorry, I didn't have anything to add because I was just absorbing your And that's how all of our crew feels.

51:06Luke Yeah, that's why they come back year on year. And I'm sure that's how all the other crews feel. And that, you know, that, that, like, um, that's what I mean when I say it's a complete privilege to be a part of history. It's like, I know that since the beginning there's been people that felt as proud and privileged and passionate as me about getting the job done. And a couple of years ago, like 20, whenever it was, when it just like rained, rained, rained, rained— oh God, it was awful— and we still, you know, and all like events were being cancelled left, right, and centre. And and you, you know, nobody drove on the grass. Like, people, people kind of understood what to do. Like, we, like, we have this whole thing on my built field where we're like, you've got your public area and your crew area, and you're not allowed to drive a vehicle on the public area. You're not allowed to walk too often in the same place on the public area. We tried to kind of like grow the grass while at the same time as we're building the field. We want like flowers and clover for the Wednesday when we open it, uh, which is super difficult when it's raining here because the whole thing just goes to mud really quickly. And, um, yeah, so we like pull down pallet walkways, move them at lunchtime, like move them again late afternoon so that we're not like— and, um, and that level of care and attention I think is going on all around the farm, and that's what makes it so beautiful to be a part of.

52:13Miguel Yeah.

52:13Luke And then the other thing is that when the volunteers come, like the big influx at the end, or the traders or the other people that contribute to the festival, you know, like when the recycling teams roll in and then it starts to build and build and build over the kind of like week before the festival.

52:27Jessi It's—

52:27Luke you sit there inside, you think like, oh, it's like I've been here like a really integral part of it, and then you see the scale of it. And even though— even having been involved for like a, you know, small number of years now, it, it still surprises me every year like how bloody big it is.

52:41Jessi Mm-hmm.

52:42Luke And just like how many people have come and how many people have contributed, you know. It's like, uh, you just see kind of festoon lighting going off forever into the distance. If you ever like walk up to the top of the park or something and look, it's like, wow, Yeah.

52:55Miguel Jessi never been up to the park.

52:57Jessi Oh yeah, okay, but I share your feeling.

53:02Luke I know what I—

53:03Miguel I know what you're talking about.

53:04Jessi Right, Miguel, firstly to clarify, I have been to the park. Come on, what you're saying is I haven't been to the sign.

53:11Luke Yeah, it is a bit of a commitment, but it's worth it.

53:15Jessi It's just like a running joke along these podcasts that anybody who's taken the Basically every time it's because I, because I'm a punter, I get there on the Wednesday, I'm like, right, I'm going up to the sign. At about 4 PM on the Wednesday, I get to the bottom of the hill, I've already had about 8 ciders, and I look up at it and see so many people up at the top of the hill, and I just go, you know what, nah. And then I turn around and go the other way.

53:37Luke I feel like you need to wait there a little bit. Someone will go past in a buggy and you can just hitch a lift.

53:41Jessi That's— yeah, I mean, that's it. When I used to work for, um, I did a bit of volunteering for Oxfam, not at Glastonbury, but for almost every other festival. And like, the, the best job was being on the tea buggy. And then once you'd been on the tea buggy once, it meant whenever you saw it going round, even if you're off shift, you'd be like, guys, have a little lift. I probably shouldn't say that on the podcast, but anyway, yeah, you're right, just find a buggy and jump on. That's— that would be the best plan. Right, uh, so we, Luke, we always ask everybody this, uh, and it's— I think in, in your instance in particular, it's going to be really, really difficult to pick one out because Because you have such a wide range of Glastonbury history, you know. But let's say if you had to pick a favourite Glastonbury memory, and maybe that's to do with Greenpeace or maybe it's not, or maybe you have a separate favourite Greenpeace Field memory, anything you can tell us.

54:33Luke I mean, like, the thing you need to know about me is, like, I'm incapable of favourites. Yeah, I don't have a favourite colour, but I can give you some highlights and then probably tomorrow I'll think differently. about it. I think my— I mean, there's so many. Yeah, such an incredible place and so many kind of like really cool— I mean, I don't know, like my favorite, like watching Stevie Wonder, like Beyoncé, I don't know. But I think probably the thing that most ever blew my mind was the first time I ever saw Arcadia, which is like the first year that they did it up in Naughty Corner. And just never seen anything like it. Yeah, it totally blew me away and they still blow me away, to be honest. Like, what a lovely bunch of people.

55:10Jessi Yeah.

55:11Luke My favorite festival, I don't know if it's my favorite, but like one of the— there's like a lot of like sort of history connected to Glastonbury, right? And I'm really sort of in— I really love being— having access to that and being part of it. I think I once— the first time I ever went to what's called a management meeting, which is in the Working Men's Club, which is a place that Michael Eavis built in Pilton, it's like a post office, local pub, snooker table side, it's kind of a really amazing place. The first time I ever went to a management meeting, it totally blew my mind to find out it was literally just a group of farmers there's like a load of old dudes, like total, you know, I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't what I got. And it's so— they were so warm and welcoming and just really felt like instantly a part of this fucking amazing thing. Just made that like extraordinary thing done by beautiful but ordinary people, you know. And then I don't know, the first time I went to the Emerging Talent Contest, that was totally amazing. And then having a look at the archive and sort of rummaging around. I remember one time, so it's like been a journey, yeah, working with Greenpeace at Glastonbury. We have to like reset a few things and then Turns out that the Greenpeace field had a really bad reputation with the people that paint and distribute the bins at Glastonbury, who are super important folk, right? Very important, yeah. We're all aware of the famous Glastonbury bin painters. So I went up to see this guy called Hank the Bin, who is like— I mean, he's like a— like, this guy's been around since forever. Yeah, he's a total icon, a total legend amongst the crews. and he's in charge and has always been in charge of painting all the bins. In fact, he might well have invented the concept. I don't know, Maceo probably invented the concept of the Glastonbury bin. I mean, anyway, I had to go to see him. He's got like a tent up on the hill. I didn't know what to expect, so I was going to go to kind of ask for some bins, please, during the build. They hadn't been put out yet, but we were like making a mess and struggling to manage our recycling. And I was really nervous, right? And I said, go, go, go. Went up there. I took my friend with me. She's like, you have to come with me, I can't do this on my own. And we went up and we opened the doors to this tent and it was just totally fucking mind-blowing. There was just a load of young artists sat around in this kind of old army tent, big old army canteen tent, all painting bins. And it's just really beautiful. The whole thing smelled of incense and maybe there was a few thousand spliffs going around in there. And just at the end of this kind of— it's like something out of a movie set.

57:33Jessi Yeah.

57:33Luke And it's just at the end, like in the dappled sunlight was just like, there's Hank the Bin, you know. It's like really like amazing sort of Gandalf-looking guy, like really sage. So I went up to him like, Hank, hi man. I'm like, I'm Luke from Greenpeace. And I hear like there's a bit of beef, but like, you know, just let you know that like, you know, we take recycling really serious. Do you reckon we could get a couple of bins, mate? And he's just sort of like, he never spoke, he just sort of pointed to a pile of like immaculately painted bins and was like, you know, you can have 4 bins or whatever. I just felt like, you know, I just felt like I have arrived in the kind of like somewhere in the Glastonbury infrastructure. Like, this is it. If you get access to hang the bin, you're like, that's it, you're kind of in.

58:14Jessi Yeah, you're in the inner circle if you've spoken to hang the bin. and he's bestowed some bins on you.

58:21Luke I don't think that— I just don't think they'd let anybody in that tent, you know.

58:25Miguel It was the beginning of the truce.

58:27Luke Yeah, yeah. And well, it is. And now, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Now, now we like have an artist called Hannah Bunn who's one of the kind of like top bin painters who's, who's committed to like doing some kind of special themed bins for our field. So we have like really built— like, that's the level of detail we're going for. Yeah. It's like we're trying to kind of like make excellence from across— like everything has to be integrated right down to the kind of I love that.

58:51Miguel Great story. So look, so of course this year has been challenging for everyone. So just if you want to quickly talk how it was dealing with the cancellation, if you can give us an idea, how far were you in the planning for this year, if you're gonna roll over for 2021. I mean, you already told us that you have everything in the field and you kind of just adapt. But anyway, if you just want to talk to us about that.

59:14Jessi Yeah, whatever you can tell us. We don't want you to give away any big secrets or anything.

59:18Luke That's okay, that's okay. So the truth of the matter is that we're fairly far along with our kind of field development for this year. We pretty much had it in the bag, and we were just absolutely devastated, like along with everybody else, that the festival was cancelled. I mean, although to be fair, that's the least of the worries, like at an international level. There's a lot more going on or whatever, but nonetheless, like at a personal level, it's very catastrophic. And, um, probably the worst thing that happened to me personally is a result of COVID But, um, I mean, nothing's really gone away yet. We're living in these really strange times, like we're trying to adapt, we're trying to kind of normalize or whatever. But the thing, the thing about the whole kind of coronavirus meltdown is that everything that existed beforehand still exists. Yeah, so climate change still exists, like the kind of refugee crisis still exists. It's like all of this shit's still going on and we still have to take it on. So I think that next year coming back to Glastonbury I mean, we're just going to pick it up where we left off. We did a big review process as part of it. So when the show was canceled and we booked all these people, I didn't want to let them— I didn't want to throw them out of work. So these are people that are heavily, heavily, heavily, heavily invested in Greenpeace and the project. So we decided to use the time that we'd booked them for to review all of our processes and all of our designs and make sure that we're doing everything as well as we could, which we knew that we weren't because we're in a constant state of development anyway. And obviously one of the outcomes of that is that we finished the field design with an idea that we'd shelve it and that would save us money and time and give us flexibility as to when the next festival is. Is it going to be next year or nobody knows what's really happening? And but obviously part— so we did do that, but a part of doing that is that you realize that what you're doing isn't as good as it could be. So then we got carried away with ourselves and we've actually redesigned an entirely new field as well. as well for next year and a couple of other spare ones for the back pocket. And then it was like, you know, like, we— our stage, for example, is in the middle of our field, and that's really good in terms of drawing an audience, but it's really bad in terms of production because it means you can't— like, how'd you get everything? How'd you get the artists to the stage? How'd you get the gear to the stage? It's like just an island in the middle. So we've, we've been looking at ways to improve our kind of health and safety and back-of-house processes and just to make things kind of more I don't know, like better but cost less money. That's where we're going. Like, I just want people to have a better experience. I want the festival to be more and more, yet more incredible, for the Greenpeace offering to be yet more relevant. But at the same time, I want to make it even more sustainable, like more efficient, like less stressful for me and the team to deliver, you know, to continue to have these kind of meaningful conversations with the audience. So to always offer something to your existing audience and to also continue to try to meet new people and engage new people in what it is that we want to talk about through diversifying our cultural offering, diversifying our music offering, diversifying our crew, joining the anti-racist fight quite wholeheartedly. And that's the future. I think that's the future for the festival as well, if I'm honest. It's to keep doing what it's doing, doing better than it already does it, which is totally incredible, obviously. And also to just endlessly come up with, like, reinvent yourself and do new things. Yeah, I think the thing that's kind of special for me about Glastonbury Festival is that even though it— like, and the journey that I've had with it— is that even though it is a different beast than the thing that I first attended as an impressionable young person, Mm-hmm. is it's still also that. It's still special, it's still free. Like, okay, you can't jump in for free anymore, or it's more difficult to do it. And there's like, you know, I have to give you like ID to come in. And I understand that people have issues with that sort of stuff, but that, like, I mean, that stuff has to exist to become a licensed event that's responsible for the health and safety and welfare of the people who go to it. So it's absolutely critical and no one should be ashamed of it. And, and what they've done such an amazing job of is retaining the spirit and the meaning and the purpose of the event. And I just sort of reject out of hand all the naysayers who's like, I don't want to go anymore because it's not what it used to be. And I say it is what it used to be, but it's just a modern version of it and it's got to move with the times, otherwise it wouldn't exist. And I think that that's what Michael and his team should be most proud of really, is that if you did jump the fence, nobody would really care. In fact, not that I'm encouraging people to do it, but it's like it hasn't lost that spirit yet. there's a lot of the old heads still about, and there's always room for new people, and that's what it should be. Yeah, it's like, I just, I just think—

1:03:55Jessi I mean, look at you. You went from jumping the fence to basically, you know, running a field in a festival, designing a field in a festival with the team. So, you know, you started with just, you know, young whippersnapper who went, oh, let's go for a party in the field and let's jump over. Yeah. And you, it, it pulled you in so much that over 30-odd years you've gone from that To being so involved that you basically, you know, design an entire area.

1:04:19Luke I was just gonna say it's only 28 years.

1:04:21Jessi Sorry, sorry, 28 years. Sorry, sorry.

1:04:25Luke But yeah, exactly that, exactly that, you know. And, and it still draws me back.

1:04:30Jessi So— I've had some people say that to me, sort of go, oh, it's not the same as it used to be. It used to be this, you know, hippie festival, this kind of thing. I'm like, but, you know, I mean, I've been going for 10 years and I've seen it grow and get what, what the word, you know, what an outsider would say bigger. I don't know how much physically bigger as far as numbers go. I think it might have only grown by sort of 20,000 people mass maybe over that time, but definitely the fields have got bigger, uh, the area has got bigger.

1:04:56Luke That's right, the fields have got bigger. Yeah, if I look at what the— what our field was doing 10 years ago and what we're doing now, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of the same. Like, we're still just turning up to talk to people and have a good time. And raise some important issues and try and raise a bit of revenue, so on and so forth. But we're doing it in a really much more serious way. But then it's worth it because the outputs are greater as well. And actually, and I'll be honest, it's like if you want to be at the greatest party in the world, you better turn up, you know, because that's what makes it the best party in the world. It's like it's not a competitive creative arms race, but nonetheless it is like a friendly Like everybody's pinching ideas off each other and like, you know, the bar just gets higher and like the, you know, like crews just get more solid and like it's like you become more inclusive and therefore it just gets better and better and better. Yeah. I mean, like all creative processes, there has to be like decay and like whatever, like things have to go and new things have to come. But in essence, like the trajectory of the festival, I mean, think about it. I don't think like 12 years ago it was selling out.

1:05:57Jessi No.

1:05:57Luke And now it's selling out in half an hour. Yeah, like year on year, people expect that to happen. And so you have to— like, it has survived some incredibly challenging times as well as an event. And Michael and his team are just like super resilient for like pulling it off over all this time. And I'm sure, like, as difficult as the cancellation must have been for them financially and like what the implications have been to like— I mean, my friends in the freelance events industry, this is pretty catastrophic. Yeah, but I am sure that we'll be back hopefully next year, and our adaptability and our resilience will hold us through, yeah, and will hold the festival through. If it came down to it, like, we'd all go down and do it for free, I'm sure, you know.

1:06:36Miguel When we were talking about building the field but also creating engagements, I think you said that maybe recent years you were focusing more in the festival part and now it's back to politics. So you would just say the context of the current situation Next year demand exactly that.

1:06:52Luke Yeah, 100%, Miguel. You know, it's— I mean, campaigning work, which is like what I do first and foremost, is like I'm a campaigner, is you, you, you've got to like select a group of people you want to talk to, like nuance your message in a way that makes sense and relates to them, and then you've got to like go at them and ram it down their faces, you know, either through like fun critical engagement or through intervention or whatever, whatever. Um, and that's the kind of cyclical process. Uh, and I— yeah, 100%, absolutely. We are at a time of process where it really matters that people understand that there's not a lot of time left in terms of climate change, that they have to leverage the compassionate response and the community-led response that we had to the kind of coronavirus— or that we have to the coronavirus pandemic. I mean, if you look at the response from a government, from like governments around the world to the coronavirus, That's what dealing with an emergency looks like. And you've never seen that with climate change. And we need to see it. Yeah, we need to see that from every single person who— like, all the people— like, we all stayed home, right? We all did what needed to be done to get through it. And because we cared about each other and we were invested in each other. And we need to do the same about climate change. And that's certainly the message that I'll be bringing to the festival next year, that we— the Greenpeace will bring to the festival next year. You know, there's really no time to waste. It's like, you know, like Greta Thunberg was saying today, it's like, you've wasted another 2 years. Yeah, like, I've been campaigning on this shit for 25, 30 years. Yeah, it's like I'm getting bored of myself talking about it. Um, and it's just, we've, you know, like, I've got children. Yeah, we're running out of time. I don't want to be alarmist, but like, Christ on a bike. Yeah, we are running out of time to get on and deal with this stuff. And hopefully, you know, like, there's an opportunity to leverage the community and kind of like wherewithal and collective intelligence from a festival audience. So they're then going to go And I think the other interesting thing about Glastonbury for Greenpeace is, of course, that you reach so many more people than just the people that go to the festival. So, like, you have all these kind of media opportunities, you go to the BBC, you know, like, there's the internet, like, you're probably reaching, like, millions of people, which is what, for example, like, when Glastonbury was cancelled this year and I was a bit like, ah God, what am I going to do to help Greenpeace kind of raise a bit of money and get a bit of profile and keep the campaign rolling?

1:09:04Jessi Yeah.

1:09:04Luke So I thought, like, oh, let's do a digital event then, which I'd never done before, like, total learning curve. I mean, I, I, someone helped me and my friend Katie, who's a kind of another kind of key Greenpeace person in Glastonbury project, Katie Duffy. We met an agency and they supported us with it. And this guy called James is our stage booker, who's totally met James Barnes, totally amazing. And then we brought forward a digital event. And that's now, having done that as a response to COVID, I think we're going to try to include that in our day-to-day Glastonbury offering next year. I see. Um, so that you can reach beyond this, you can use the festival. It's an incredible opportunity for Greenpeace and Oxfam and WaterAid to reach beyond who's at the festival and to reach the kind of millions of people that are engaged with the festival through other forms of media while it's going on. And actually probably got an audience of like, I don't know, 15, 20 million people there, which— so you could do something with that. Yeah, that's like—

1:09:52Jessi I think with that as well, like, the one thing we noticed this year is that I think the fact that the festival didn't happen this year and people were, you know, tuning into whatever footage there was Yeah, people was— people were starting to realize that it's not just the BBC footage, do you know what I mean? There's so many other places to Glastonbury, and if you guys had like a digital element, there would be people who would be scrabbling for that because—

1:10:16Luke Yeah, and I think that's what all the areas have realized.

1:10:18Jessi 100%.

1:10:20Luke So I mean, I understand why the BBC do their coverage as they do, but they— there's a story that's not being told there, which is of all this other stuff at the festival. I mean, you know, the Shangri-Las the Unfairground, the kind of hidden art installations in the Green Fields.

1:10:34Jessi Yeah.

1:10:35Luke Arcadia, you know, like there's just a bazillion, like, I don't know, like Mini Schools sound like just totally amazing. All of Theatre and Circus, totally mind-blowing, you know. None of that. I mean, I don't mean— I'm not criticizing the BBC. I'm just— it's just irrelevant. It's like none of that is represented in that coverage. And I guess that you really have to be at the festival to kind of see that sort of stuff. stuff, probably what all the areas have realized. Me and my team definitely realized we can broadcast this, we can reach more people. We were talking the other day about sort of making digital games that were affecting what happened on the field. So if you're at home in kind of Manila and your favorite band was on, you could somehow kind of do something that would show up on the field or whatever. So we could try to connect all these audiences and make people realize, like Greenpeace is a global organization, we can make people realize that Glastonbury is like a global, you know, like we're all connected basically. And to solve the problems that we face, we're going to need to like leverage that connection and community and compassion and empathy. That's also like probably how we're going to like— one of the ways it's about like connecting with each other as people and like recognizing each other's stories and then taking our own responsibility for like what's going on and trying to drive change. Brilliant.

1:11:45Jessi Yeah, I can't wait for that. I think that would be just being able to get those like smaller areas of Glastonbury out to people, because that's the main conversation I have with anyone who's never been.

1:11:55Miguel Yes, yes.

1:11:56Jessi Oh, you know, it looks good on the telly, I'd probably go and see so-and-so on the Pyramid Stage. I'm like, that's not what it's about.

1:12:02Luke But the thing is, I want to shake them and go— Yeah, exactly. But the, the— what the BBC did— do, do is they do an incredible job of representing these incredible artists who are doing amazing performances. And that, like— but, but on top of that, there's a red button, dude, and like— or the blue button maybe— and that hits Depending on which one you press, you could go down a different rabbit hole, you know, quite literally.

1:12:25Jessi Maybe it'd be amazing if you could do some sort of live streaming bits there next year for Actional Areas, kind of, you know, version 2 or whatever.

1:12:32Luke Actional Areas. I think it'll be version 3 by then because we've got another thing in the pipeline for later in the year. But yeah, that's, uh, you did hear it here first.

1:12:41Jessi Yeah. Um, okay, this has all been amazing. It's been so, so good to speak to you, and honestly, I could listen to you talk about Glastonbury and Greenpeace for hours, but we'll just finish on one thing. Um, you sort of mentioned in various, you know, answers to other questions about, you know, what we can do and how important it is for people to get out there and show their activism with protests or whatever. Um, but I mean, outside of the festival, if you could sort of summarize, what's the best way if one of our listeners wanted to get involved with Greenpeace or, you know, wanted to really push their sustainability this year? Or, well, listen, are there any kind of resources?

1:13:16Luke Getting involved with Greenpeace is super easy. Yeah, just go to the website, site, click on, uh, Get Involved, and then I think there's like 6 or 7 dropdown options. You know, you could— I mean, I'd recommend people to go to the local group meetings. So if you're living in a reasonably major conurbation, there's going to be a Greenpeace group in your area. And like, they're nice people, they're going to be meeting in a kind of inclusive and safe space. Go along and meet them, see what you can do. You can— through that, that might lead you to activism, that might lead you to sort of communicating campaigns in different ways like street stalls or stickering. You can become a Green Speaker, so we'll train you in how to go into sort of schools, those sort of places, and talk about these issues. Uh, as I said, some loads of different ways you can get involved in Greenpeace. You can sign up to do take direct action straight off the bat, and then you'll end up— you'll do a training in nonviolent direct action, you'll meet someone like me, and, uh, I'll take you and do something naughty but valid and legitimate. Uh, and then, you know, changes that you can make in your own life. I mean, I really— you know, we should have— we should, to be honest, we should have all made by now the changes we need to make. And I'm not going to tell someone to like not hop on a short-haul flight to France. That's not what I'm here to do. Like, if you really want to drive change, you have to force the government and corporations to do it. And the only way to do that is by taking action of some sort. So that could be like, you could take action on the internet, you could join— I mean, I hate to say it, but you could join an XR protest, or there are other groups apart from Greenpeace available. If environmentalism isn't your primary concern, if you've got other other issues that are more confronting for you in your day-to-day life, then, you know, there's chats to be had about the intersectionality of struggle, about, you know, like, I mean, I think, like, for example, Black Lives Matter, that, you know, like, the struggle against institutional racism is paramount. But incidentally, it's also a paramount, paramount, sorry, part of dealing with climate change, because climate change, for example, is inherently racist. Yes, like, we polluted the North and the problems are first suffered in the Global South. You know, like air pollution in London is worse in poor areas, and in poor areas you're going to find like significant populations of Black and ethnic minority people. So it's like there is an intersectionality of issues, and if you're campaigning on something that is more relevant to you, there is still room for like including climate change in that, because in the end climate change is the thing that connects us all.

1:15:35Miguel Yeah.

1:15:35Luke In our struggle, it's the thing that we'll die off in the end if we don't sort it out. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry to be down a gloom.

1:15:43Jessi No, no, no, no, we need it.

1:15:45Luke That's, that's the truth of the matter. Yeah, so we have to build a greener, fairer, more sustainable world. Yeah, and a more equitable world. And we, and we, you know, just like I can't stand by any longer without actively thinking long and hard and then taking action about what I can do to challenge kind of structural racism in my own life, I don't think that anybody else should be able to stand by and and not think about what it is that they can do to challenge runaway climate change within their own lives. You know, there's— there is something that all of us can be doing and sacrifices that we can make if we need to. And there's a lot of changes that you can make that aren't sacrificial. And to be honest, there's, there's some that you can make that would be, and it would be a wise thing to do for all of us.

1:16:26Jessi Brilliant.

1:16:27Miguel Amazing.

1:16:28Jessi Thank you very much.

1:16:29Miguel Well, well, look, this has been amazing to chat with you, to hear you, uh, not only your story but the story about Glastonbury and Greenpeace. I just want to say thank you Greenpeace and Glastonbury are doing an amazing job. I think you did find this balance of creating a festival experience while creating engagement. So the reach that you are having and the amount of change you're doing with your work together with your team is fantastic.

1:16:53Luke That's really kind of you. Thanks. Thanks, Miguel.

1:16:55Miguel Yeah. And I mean, just talking to you today, I just feel like, yeah, as you said, it's time to take action.

1:17:01Luke So it certainly is, mate. I'll see you on the barricades. Yes.

1:17:05Jessi Yeah.

1:17:06Miguel You shouldn't feel bad for bringing the mood down every now and then.

1:17:10Luke I can't help it.

1:17:13Miguel Yeah. So it was really, really amazing to have this conversation with you.

1:17:17Luke Yeah, I enjoyed talking to you too. Thanks, Miguel.

1:17:19Jessi Yeah, I can only echo Miguel. I feel really inspired right now. I'm sat here in my bedroom like, right, what can I do immediately? So yeah, thank you so much for speaking to us, Luke.

1:17:28Luke It's my pleasure. And let's all hope that we're going to meet under the rave tree on the Greenpeace field in 2021. I promise you a good party.

1:17:36Miguel I think those are the words to finish off then. Oh, that was a great chat with Luke and what amazing work he does with his team at every edition of the festival. How great that he was able to combine like these 2 passions. Like, he's been going to the festival since he was a teenager and he engaged in activism, and now like he's combining all this at the festival. We're all like, yeah, well done, Luke.

1:18:02Jessi Yeah, it was really, really cool to speak to him. It's, it's just mad to hear someone with that many years of experience and that many different varieties of experience, you know, going from, as you mentioned, going from somebody who maybe jumped the fence in their first year to actually, you know, managing a field and then all the complexities that come with that. I don't know about you, Miguel, I loved hearing about all the stuff like, you know, uh, how they got the olive oil kind of delivered from Panama or something. I think, you know, the chefs pick up the food on the way down, all those little things that you wouldn't, wouldn't think to hear about.

1:18:28Rob I love Yeah, brilliant interview, guys. So much good information there. I always find, you know, with people that put so much into it and, you know, and really keen on saving the environment and not just saving the environment but promoting it and working so hard, it's just fantastic. And Lucas clearly dedicated a large amount of his life to that, so he's worked really hard and now he's got this fantastic job at the festival.

1:18:51Miguel It was great to learn the care they put into offsetting their own impact of putting the field every year. And I think that's what he said, like, to showcase that that is a better way, a more sustainable way of running things. And yeah, so that was very interesting. And he gave us so many insights and stories about what happens behind the scenes.

1:19:09Jessi So I love the story about meeting Hank the Bin. That was my favorite. I've got a few friends who are bin painters, or binnies as they refer to themselves. So it was really when he was telling that story, it was making me smile. I enjoyed that.

1:19:20Miguel Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe one day we should get Hank the Bin to come to the podcast and give his side of the story. Imagine. Another thing I found quite interesting, he mentioned how in the recent years they kind of deprioritized campaigning and were focusing on building the field, bringing the audience. And I must, I must say that that definitely is working because I've been going more and more to the Greenpeace field every year and I'm getting more affected by their message at the same time. So that's definitely a good job going on there.

1:19:49Jessi Yeah, same for me. Like, I think we used to drop in as such, but we didn't really used to stay there. I think I said in one of our roundups of last year that I spent an entire day at Greenpeace mainly for the music, but there's a lot of breaks between the music and you end up wandering around speaking to people and there's just so much going on there. So yeah, really amazing place.

1:20:10Miguel I think the giant rave tree, I think that was a great addition. I think they did it one year and it kind of stayed and it means it became like a nightspot as well, but then people come back in the morning to have some food or to have conversations.

1:20:23Rob So yeah, I must admit I've spent, you know, many of my evenings there in particular because I just absolutely love that Rave Tree. I think it's just such a beautiful spectacle. And as a fan of that kind of, you know, the music they play in the evenings there, what a great vibe. Fantastic.

1:20:38Jessi And also to do power ballad yoga, you know, that's my favorite thing on a morning at Greenpeace.

1:20:45Miguel One day I'm gonna be able to wake up that early. Or is Stay awake longer.

1:20:50Jessi Stay awake. Probably is the—

1:20:51Miguel that's the way. Yeah, that'll be my strategy as well.

1:20:54Jessi Let's be honest, Miguel, me and you are the ones that will stay awake till 10 in the morning. We won't be going to bed and getting up by then. Brilliant.

1:21:08Miguel Well, so I think that's, that's it from us for this episode, Jessi.

1:21:11Jessi Yeah, yeah, I think that's, that's it. It's great to be back after such a long time. So yeah, really, really good.

1:21:17Miguel We're definitely going to be trying to put more episodes out. Of course, things— everything got a little bit difficult, and while we were preparing this episode, there was some news update that the October sale is not going to happen. So it's definitely going to be a different run-up to the festival, as we mentioned at the beginning, but we're looking to hear your stories. There are 50 years of story that we can listen and interview people about.

1:21:41Jessi Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. As, as we say in every episode, if you've got anything to talk with us about, you know, it doesn't have to be an hour-long interview like our one with Luke. It can just be like a 10-minute chat about, you know, your, your, your experience of the festival and what it means to you. Um, and then, yeah, let's, let's get it going. Let's get some more episodes out and we'd love to speak to you.

1:21:58Miguel And thank you very much. See you next time.

1:22:00Jessi Yeah, thanks.

1:22:02Miguel Bye.