Image of two students standing next to Glastonbury sign

Solent students lay down the law at Glastonbury Festival

1 July 2022

This year saw a crack team of Solent students working at Glastonbury festival - producing footage and interviews for the BBC and more. An important aspect of this work is music and media contracts and for this, Solent law students put their skills into practice.

Law student Elysia tells us a bit about her experience, and how she put her law knowledge to good work at the UK's largest music festival.

Thanks to Solent University, I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of two law degree students, alongside 38 TV, film and media students, after submitting a successful application. We were brought along to the festival for a week’s worth of work experience on Silver Hayes’ Lonely Hearts Club stage and the Left Field Stage.

This past weekend concluded the last day of Glastonbury Festival 2022 - one of the biggest music and arts festival in the country each year. After not taking place throughout the pandemic, it was promised to be the biggest yet and it did not fail.

I was lucky enough to have been successful in being one of the two 'legal eagles' (law students) to attend the work experience programme.

Within this role, myself and Ben reviewed and amended previously existing copyright contracts between Glastonbury Festivals Events Ltd, Solent Productions (on behalf of Solent University) and the British Broadcasting Company (the BBC) to create a contract between the three parties outlining the copyrights owned by each party and the limits to their usage. We did this alongside the help and guidance of a festival-specialist lawyer who was on hand via email.

This role also involved communicating with the performers, acts and artists, as well as their management and record labels backstage, to ensure each contract was completed correctly and in time, which also required networking with other media and entertainment crew to ensure all information was handled correctly and efficiently both on and off-site.

As well as this, we also created a contract between Solent Productions and Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd that provided the limitations and abilities for students to request, keep and use 20 seconds of their own recordings from the duration of the festival for educational and self-promotional purposes.

I was also asked to assist with taking correct GDPR consents for the audio and visual recordings of the public around the festival for the purpose of a BBC documentary.

All of this physical work put into practice the theory and knowledge we were gained during our studies in LLB (Hons) Law at Solent, where we were able to recall extensive information that we had been taught on the degree to utilise within our positions onsite.

This experience was truly one I will never forget and am eternally grateful to Solent for providing me with the chance to experience a range of different legal careers that could be available to me after I graduate.