festival bosses talk Festivals Britannia

Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis, Isle Of Wight Festival's John Giddings and Festival Republic managing director Melvin Benn are all featured in a new 90-minute documentary 'Festival Britannia', to be screened by BBC4 next Friday 17th December.

The programme will be tracing the development of larger live music events from such late 50s manifestations as the Beauliue Jazz festival to today's crowded and competitive sector, the programme has contributions from such artists as Richard Thompson, Acker Bilk, Terry Reid, Levellers, and Billy Bragg

Continuing the highly successful and critically acclaimed Britannia series for BBC Four, Festivals Britannia tells the story of the emergence and evolution of the British music festival through the mavericks, dreamers and dropouts who have produced and experienced them.

The 90-minute documentary traces the ebb and flow of British festival culture over the past 50 years and explores the central tension between people's desire to come together, dance to the music and build temporary communities; and the desire of the state, councils and locals to police these often unruly gatherings. At the heart of the documentary is an ongoing argument about British freedoms set to a wonderful soundtrack of 50 years of great popular music.

The programme tells the festival story in three parts, 'Something In The Air'; 'Ramble On'; and 'A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours'.

The first part looks at how a heady mix of youth-music festivals and politics combined in the early Sixties to create the rumblings of Britain's first counter-cultures. Exploring events such as the early jazz festivals at Beauliue and the National Jazz and Blues festivals, the free Hyde Park concerts and the first Isle of Wight Festival, the film traces the evolution of music and festival culture through the Sixties and explores the gathering arguments about whether rock 'n' roll and festivals should be free.

Ramble On charts the reaction against commercialism and the golden era of the free festival movement in the Seventies. When an aristocratic hippie called Andrew Kerr teamed up with Somerset dairy farmer Michael Eavis to put on Glastonbury Fayre in 1971, it unwittingly became the spiritual birthplace of the free festival movement. This section explores the notion of festivals becoming more about an alternative, nomadic way of life. The Sixties hippie ideal of a new society was becoming an alternative reality for a growing number of people but the advent of Conservative rule in 1979 would change British festival culture for ever.

The final part looks at how festival counter-culture came head to head with the establishment and how it was eventually co-opted by mainstream society. At the dawn of the Eighties, unemployment and strikes were rife, with new sub-cultures emerging, such as punk and the new wave of heavy metal, as festivals such as Donington and Reading became society's pressure-release valves. The original hippie idealists were being joined by the post-punk urban squatters and this collective, known as the "Peace Convoy", would change the face of the free festival movement beyond recognition by 1984's Stonehenge Festival.

The programme investigates the emergence of rave culture in the late Eighties and explores the changes forced by stricter controls and tighter legislation in the Nineties and beyond. With big business and TV broadcasting moving in, the ideological battle for the heart of Britain has faded away, as music and big name acts have returned to the forefront of the festival stage.

Produced and directed by Sam Bridger, the programme will air on BBC4 at 9pm on Friday 17th December and will be followed by Pulp's performance at Glastonbury Festival in 1995.

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