Glastonbury: Low-Stakes & High-Creativity Learning
The Story Behind Glastonbury’s 17,000+ Hand-Painted Bins
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As you step through the gates of Glastonbury Festival, you are immediately struck by its sheer magnitude. The air buzzes with a mixture of anticipation and the distant hum of music, while the fields stretch out before you, dotted with colorful tents and flags waving in the breeze. Festival-goers, dressed in eclectic outfits, create a vibrant tapestry as you make your way towards the stages, where the soundscape shifts and layers.
This year, the festival welcomed over 200,000 attendees, including 60,000 staff, to the fields of Worthy Farm in Somerset1. With such a large crowd comes a significant amount of trash. Yet, in keeping with a tradition started by the founder in the 80s, the 17,000 trash bins at the event are not standard plastic bins, but 45-gallon oil drum bins, each individually hand-painted.
But how do they achieve this? How do they complete this enormous task with no automated processes and logistics, relying solely on human creativity?
Through an unconventional collaborative residency. That’s the format we’re exploring today.
📰 What’s the format?
A collective “art residency” at the heart of a music festival.
Originally, art residencies act as avenues to give artists physical workspaces along with fresh viewpoints to enhance their creative pursuits. The first artist-in-residence programs emerged around 1900 in the UK and the US, where art-loving benefactors offered guest studios to artists as a form of patronage.
At Glastonbury, getting people to paint 17,000 rubbish bins works like a collective art residency:
This process is carried out by two groups of painters. One team is made up of approximately ten professional paid artists living on the site, painting for ten long weeks. The other team of 80 volunteers live on-site for three weeks in exchange for their festival ticket.
“We paint together for eight hours a day everyday, but all you hear from this group is harmony and occasional explosive laughter… We celebrate and constructively critique each other's work”. ⎯ Muhammed, a long-time base painter, to Charlie Sheppard in this article.
🎛️ What are the features?
Roberta Ferraresi, a researcher at the University of Bologna, wrote an essay on the evolution of the art residency starting in Renaissance Europe. For her, a residency should:
Be constituted as space and time other than everyday life;
Be dedicated to artists' retreats, giving them opportunities for research and reflection;
Invest in the dimension of encounter with the other and with otherness – that is, with the inhabitants of the territory in which it is located, with the clients and their projects, sometimes also with other resident artists, and more widely, in the comparison between different hopes, disciplines, languages and focus on aspects related to the exchange of experience, teaching and training;
Materialize as a moment of shared life and work;
Open up to the experimentation of ways of living, working, creating differently, and even propose new paths of research and roles of art in society.
Glastonbury, although it is originally a music and performing arts festival and not a collective art residency, ticks all these boxes.
💡 Why is it effective for learning?
Glastonbury is not just a creative endeavor but also an effective learning experience. Here’s why:
#1: Creation in Real-World Scenarios
Creating something tangible in a real-world setting offers a unique learning experience. Whatever it is you paint, it’s a tangible object that will serve a specific purpose. And even if it’s just keeping the festival’s fields clean, people will most likely see what you created, and that might spark inspiration, smiles, emotions… all very real things from the very real world.
#2: Low Stakes, High Learning
The low-stakes nature of painting rubbish bins for the festival is a key factor in its effectiveness. As Jewelz, a veteran of the painting community, says, “There is a disposable nature to this art – it’ll be gone and painted over next year. This creates a freedom of expression; as artists, we are completely in the moment, before we move on to the next bin.” This approach allows artists to focus on the process rather than the outcome, encouraging experimentation and creative risk-taking.
Imagine having the freedom to experiment without the fear of failure, outside expectations, or any negative consequence, really. It’s quite liberating.
#3: Repetition
Hannah, one of the professional artists at Glastonbury, highlights the importance of repetition in learning. She decorates up to ten oil drums a day, balancing quick, less detailed pieces with a few more intricate ones. This method of “quick-bins” and “longer-bins” ensures a blend of efficiency and creativity, helping artists hone their skills through varied practice.
Repetition might seem monotonous, but it’s the backbone of mastery. It’s like practicing scales on a piano or running the same route every morning. Each time, you get a little better, a little more confident, and eventually, it becomes second nature.
To me, the most interesting aspect of a learning experience like this is the combination between the three features: low-stakes and high-stakes learning through repetition. It’s low stakes because there are no strict guidelines or rules. Your work is not going to get harshly judged. You won’t lose anything for trying.
It’s high stakes because you’re creating something palpable and real.
It’s good work because you’re doing it repeatedly, like training a muscle.
This mix of low-stakes creating, real-world impact and practice or repetition creates an environment where learning thrives. Just like the festival itself, Glastonbury’s painted bins is a living, breathing experiment in creativity and collaboration.
💌 An Invitation
Have you experienced the feeling of seeing your work out there in the world? Glastonbury gives artists that feeling tenfold. It’s a reminder that learning can be orchestrated to have a tangible impact for both creators and spectators.
Next time you find yourself in the midst of a massive creative project, take a page from Glastonbury’s book. Here are a few questions to help you turn a simple project into a collective creative endeavor:
How can you create a space that encourages experimentation and collaboration?
Who can you invite to join you in this creative journey?
How will you showcase the final creations?
🏷 Summary
The mix of low-stakes creating, real-world impact and practice/repetition creates an environment where learning thrives.
👉 Coming Up Next
In our next segment, we’ll explore how you can use video to enhance engagement and create a more personalized learning experience. Stay tuned…
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This edition was inspired by this It’s Nice That article by Charlie Sheppard.
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