Glastonbury Festival support for good causes reaches record £5.9mn in 2024
Melanie May | 9 December 2024 | News
This year, Glastonbury Festival is supporting charities with a record-breaking £5.9 million, its organisers have announced.
This includes £4.3mn in donations, including £2mn to the NHS Somerset Charity and £126k to support NHS hospitals in Bristol and nursing staff across the UK. £1.6m was also given as payments for services such as stewarding, which charities provide at the festival.
Support has gone to its joint charity partners, Oxfam, WaterAid and Greenpeace, and to other projects and organisations in the UK and overseas.
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Donations have been made to Oxfam, War Child, UNHCR and other charities to help fund their work in some of the world’s most challenged regions.
Glastonbury Festival’s Emergency Fundraiser Crowdfunder appeal also supported people in conflict and raised £639k. The Festival matched this, bringing the total to over £1.27m to support the British Red Cross, Oxfam and War Child in delivering humanitarian aid to those in need.
The Festival has also supported charities working with refugees and asylum seekers both at home and overseas, such as the UK Refugee Council and the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and helped charities promoting access to music for emerging artists, grass roots music, audiences, promoters and venues through donations to the Music Venue Trust.
Local support
In addition, with many of the Festival’s wider community and crew Bristol-based, this year various projects in the city have also received donations, including the Bristol Children’s Charity, Youth Moves, Young Bristol and Black2Nature, which support families, vulnerable and young people in the Bristol area with a range of initiatives.
Local to the Festival itself, initiatives in Pilton and other nearby towns and villages have also received support, such as enrichment projects for local primary schools and vegetable growing for community food banks. Donations have also gone towards the Somerset Carers’ network and supported local organisations like the Food Forest Project and the Somerset Wildlife Trust.
Long-term partnership
Long-term partner WaterAid has been with Glastonbury since 1994. Two big developments since the charity’s first appearance at Worthy Farm have been the launch of its water refill points in 2014 and the creation of its Loo Crew cleaning teams.
This year was its 30th and saw more than 700 WaterAid volunteers at the festival, keeping toilet spaces and hygiene points clean, maintaining the water points and kiosks, and supporting the clean up after the event. It also saw the charity partner with Cyndi Lauper to bring a Disco Loo to the festival to raise awareness of the 1 in 5 people who don’t have a decent toilet.
Glastonbury tickets for 2025 went on sale in November – and sold out in 35 minutes.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.