Outreach isn't all hard work and toil, although it does involve a bit of that. Somehow Simon Beast had managed to persuade the Glastonbury organisers to give YFGM a couple of tickets to run a Quaker tent at the biggest festival of arts and music that England can offer.
The hard work and toil came from carrying YFGM's very large tent all the way across the temporary city, thanks to Mark Beast and friends for helping us out there. The YFGM tent is very large and, as we found out on the first day, it leaks. Fortunately Adam B had brought along a spare tent that we put up inside the YFGM tent which kept us snug and dry. Ellie C and Clair M roughed it with the masses in one of the large and noisy campsites.
Glastonbury has two sides to it. On the one hand you have the dancers, ravers and music lovers and on the other hand there's a large contingent of tree-hugging hippies. We were firmly where we belonged among the tree-hugging hippies. After the initial scare of rain on the first morning the sun shone so we put out all the posters and leaflets we could find, advertised meeting for worship thrice daily and waited for the punters to come.
Visitors included people who were Quakers and were pleasantly surprised to see us there, people who had heard of Quakers and wanted to know more about us and some people who had never heard of Quakers but didn't they have something to do with porridge oats. The "What do Quakers Say" cards were good for bringing in this last category and also helpful for those ever-tricky "so what's this whole Quakerism thing about then?" questions. The t-shirts with "Young Quakers" written on them were very effective at getting people curious, Middle Bryers promised to wear one while on his graveyard shift at the Samaritans tent during the Radiohead concert to keep him cheery. We managed to attract at least one visitor for most of the Meetings for worship, although a busy field with lots of distractions isn't the ideal location for silence.
Quakerism besides, the festival was excellent fun. REM were great, although most things are when you have girls wrapping their legs around your head. Radiohead were suitably depressing, but I thought the bloke who peed on my leg was getting in the mood a bit too much. Flaming lips put on a party, Sigur Ros were as chilled as can be and I highly recommend the salsa dancing.
Adam's photos should be available online at:
Copyleft Jonathan Riddell 2003
Glastonbury helps me live my testimony to simplicity
Some Quakers sitting quite still
Young Quakers