Solent at Glastonbury Festival 2019

Last summer, a group of Solent students had the amazing opportunity to work at Glastonbury Festival, something Solent has uniquely offered since 2004. As we slowly approach that time of year, we thought the students could reminisce on their experiences and tell us more about what it was like.

BA(Hons) Media Production student Aaliyah Yaqub was an OB Camera Operator for the Gully Blues stage, where she captured the acts on the stage. She worked on various cameras for the stage such and Left of Stage, Right of Stage, Roaming Camera and Front of House camera, so her role always kept her busy!

She said, "Glastonbury is a massive highlight of my time at university and I am so grateful to have been a part of a great team of people. It helped with my technical skills and I even learnt how to vision-mix and direct the stage and spent some of my free time practicing and taking over. Overall, I gained some really valuable experience and had a lot of fun at the same time! I would highly recommend anyone to apply to and give it your best shot and not be nervous as Solent Productions will support you throughout the whole process!"

Chloe Farrier-Ledden, another MP student was a Location Producer and Director working in a three person documentary crew. Her job was to create a short documentary to make for Glastonbury about Extinction Rebellion (XR) as there was an event going on at 'The Park' stage where there were guest speakers from Extinction Rebellion, Wisdom Speakers and other charities.

She also interviewed singer Nick Mulvey who performed at the XR event and she said, "I had planned to interview people from Extinction Rebellion, but on the day I manage to interview people from lots of different organisations, so I had to think of questions on the spot, which was slightly daunting but it was fun and went well!" 

Impressively, their footage was sent to news channels across the world and her crew covered the opening of Glastonbury where Michael Eavis cuts the ribbon and filmed pieces to feature on BBC Songs of Praise, so there was plenty of great work from their team!

"Glastonbury was an incredible opportunity, great team and a very fun time!" - Aaliyah Yaqub

"Working at Glastonbury was amazing! The hands-on, 'real-world' experience I got was invaluable. I learnt a lot about my role and developed important production skills. I also got to work with new people from different courses who are all very talented and made great friends and memories along the way." - Chloe Farrier-Ledden 

Written and published by Chloe Webb

BA(Hons) Media Production

Solent Media