Arcadia has announced details of a brand-new installation, Pangea, making its debut at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.
Pangea takes inspiration from the prehistoric supercontinent where every land on earth was one. The new installation is exclusive to Glastonbury and will evolve over the next five years.
A giant 50-meter high structure sits at Pangea’s heart, repurposed after decades of service at Avonmouth docks and as old as the festival itself. Arcadia bypassed traditional set building to rescue a towering symbol of Somerset’s industrial heritage.
Pangea is guided by crowd interaction and a collaborative momentum that harnesses skills and ideas from all walks of life. In terms of scale and tonnage, the central crane is Arcadia’s most ambitious engineering project to date and the logistics of its installation have been eye-watering, while the crane’s monumental beauty and the blank canvas it unlocks in the sky open a thrilling new dimension.
A core of light, sound and energy pulsates from Pangea’s epicentre, surrounded by primeval fire, tumultuous explosions and visceral sensory peaks as the Glastonbury spirit floods through its DNA.
Arcadia’s creative director, Pip Rush, said: “It’s time for a new journey at Glastonbury and heading into the unknown is where we’ve found all our best ideas. Michael Eavis has supported many generations of creative minds and, in that spirit, we want to make sure we’re also stimulating new generations of ideas and welcoming others to collaborate with our team. The structure gives us infinite scope to take over the sky and the potential is very exciting.”
Technical director, Bert Cole, said:“This has been a serious mission! The sheer scale of it has definitely been a challenge but breathing new life into this old industrial beast and evolving the concept around it has been amazing so far.
“This is a total voyage of discovery for all of us and we won’t know exactly what direction it heads in next until there’s a crowd around it – that organic evolution through a feedback loop with thousands of people is one of the best feelings on earth and is what Arcadia is all about.”
Arcadia Reach will also be at Glastonbury for the first time. A non-profit that channels Arcadia’s skills, networks and resources into collaborative projects with a far broader range of communities, Arcadia Reach has built a fire engine for a refugee camp, hosted creative welding workshops for thousands of kids and worked with local carnivals around the UK.
Author: Paul Allott
Paul Allott is a director and co-founder of Event Industry News, Event Tech Live and the Event Technology Awards.
