We’ve been seeking that festival feeling for millennia

Why else do we endure discomfort, queues, and sleep deprivation?

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A singer on a stage holds out his arms to conduct the crowd.

Chris Martin enchanting Glastonbury.

Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why do we go to festivals? It was something I contemplated at 4am while trying to stop a marquee from setting sail into the air during a quintessentially English late July storm. Thankfully we pinned it down, but sometimes it seems we can't get a handle on something until it's been taken away from us. Lockdown allowed us to indulge in some soul-searching about our appetite for summer festivals. A Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee survey of 36,000 people showed that what people most missed about festivals during the pandemic was 'the atmosphere'. The atmosphere, much like that airborne marquee, is something difficult to put your finger on, but whatever it is, you do want to soak it up.

So, what contributes to that ‘atmosphere’? Harry van Vliet from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences compared over 20 studies into motivations for festival-going. He distilled them into: escape, family togetherness, socialisation, and novelty. Other researchers, such as Rippen and Bos, cite realising significance, giving meaning and giving shape, and deploying, developing and maintaining competencies. As abstract and ethereal as our motivations are, at festivals we want to ram the tent peg into the ground, staking the opportunity to escape or to imagine the future. Why else would you endure discomfort, questionable cuisine and sanitation, queues and sleep deprivation? We endure little inconveniences because we have bigger thirsts.

Then there's the gap between what people hope to get out of a festival and what the organisers are aiming for. Spare a thought for those who booked onto the FYRE Festival, which promised ‘a new type of music festival that would ignite the energy and power of its guests’. Instead, they ignited fury, lawsuits, and six years in prison for the founder. The driver here was greed. If festivals are an immersive experience, what the festivalgoers unsuspectingly immersed themselves in was the sad fruit of that particular rotten orchard. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas, the staff ate sandwiches in styrofoam boxes and guests who’d spent up to $100,000 to attend fought over a limited number of mattresses and tents. One legal document from a guest claimed guests were lured into ‘a complete disaster, mass chaos and post-apocalyptic nightmare’.

The performer, therefore, is like a prophet or a priest. We get to enter little portals to the divine.

We know if we’ve immersed ourselves in something more hopeful. I’ve spoken to several people who’ve been to Taylor Swift gigs, all still ‘buzzing’. Cities and countries keep reporting the bounce, the economic uplift they’ve all experienced from a Swift visitation. Deep down, at concerts and festivals alike we all probably know that we’re not there to ignite the energy and power of us as the guests, but to spectate the energy of the maestro at work. They are the ones who plumb the depths of creative introspection for us. They are the ones who concoct, via musical alchemy and a large support team, something reaching transcendence. If we can immerse ourselves in that, then, however fleetingly, all the inconvenience will have been worth it.

Festivals, therefore, are a pick-n-mix of artistry that we can come up close to. And therefore, the thought goes, their creative genius. Which is almost as elusive as the atmosphere of an immersive festival itself. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, says it was a mistake when we placed the human at the centre of the universe, and the pressure that comes from having to be a creative genius. In her 2009 TED Talk she spoke about Socrates believing he had a daemon that spoke to him, and the Romans believed that they had a ‘sort of disembodied creative spirit’ called a genius. The performer, therefore, is like a prophet or a priest. We get to enter little portals to the divine.

Maybe Coldplay can be right, when on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury they sang to tens of thousands, ‘you’ve got a higher power.’

But what if the founder of the FYRE Festival was actually right? What if the guests themselves at festivals have energy and power, and not just Chris Martin? Millenia ago, this idea was once also floated at the festival of tabernacles, or Sukkot, where the Israelites made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem and would camp in tents for seven days.

The gospel writer John says that Jesus spoke to whatever it was people had pitched up tents by the temple for:

‘On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’

John goes on to explain that ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.’

Where the Holy Spirit had previously been given to specific people, for specific times and purposes, including creativity, here the Holy Spirit was promised to anyone who would believe in him. And as well as their own fulfilment, the divine creative energy would flow through them to others.

More than a mere atmosphere or nebulous spirit, Jesus claims to be one with the creative energy who hovered over the waters at the start of the Bible, the dwelling place at the end of the Bible where God will be with his people, and drove a stake, or a cross, into the ground to enable this to happen.

Maybe Coldplay can be right, when on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury they sang to tens of thousands, ‘you’ve got a higher power.’

Article

Culture

Music

3 March 2025

4 min read

As creativity and AI battle, greed is the true enemy

Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign we’re made for more than utility.

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a writer exploring the role of faith in the arts, fashion, and design

A black and white list of music tracks reads: IS THIS WHAT WE WANT. THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT MUST NOT LEGALISE MUSIC THEFT.

1,000 artists, one message.

Is the battle between AI and creativity over before it began? A collective of 1,000 musicians have released a silent album to protest new government copyright laws that would make it easier for companies to train AI models without paying artists. The album, titled “Is This What We Want?,” has a tracklist that reads “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.”

But this isn’t the first time that new technology has threatened the livelihood of musicians, nor the first time musicians have fought back. And the lesson to be learned from the past is that the real enemy of creativity isn’t technology- it’s greed.

Musicians on strike

The invention of the record player forever changed the music industry. It’s difficult to imagine a time when you could only hear music if someone was playing a live instrument. As music records grew rapidly in popularity, payments to the musicians behind the records lagged behind.

Up until the 1940s, record companies paid studio musicians only for the time in the studio. Playing records on live radio was cheaper than hiring big bands (which had previously been the norm) because the musicians wouldn’t see any revenue from their repeated use. But in August 1942, fed up at the lack of royalties paid from music records, the American Federation of Musicians went on strike.

The silence lasted nearly 2 years. During the strike, musicians were allowed to play for live radio but banned from playing on records.

At first, record companies relied on releasing music they had already recorded. But when it became clear that the strike would last longer than expected, they began to rely on acapella voices in place of big bands for new releases. The strike concluded in 1944 as record players conceded to the American Federation of Musicians and set up a system of paying royalties to musicians. The battle was over.

The technology creativity face-off

Technology has often seemed to be at odds with human creativity despite emerging from it. Human creativity invented the record player, but the record player threatened the human creativity of all those musicians playing live.

In a similar way, artificial intelligence was both invented by creative humans and trained on the work of other creative humans. And yet, its very existence seems to threaten the work of thousands. AI’s threat is felt in every corner of the creative industries- in music, illustration, art, film and photography. And it’s not just a worry for Top 40 singers. Generative AI threatens to replace graphic and web design for small businesses, music in the background of commercials and videos, illustrations on mass produced birthday cards and souvenirs- all areas of creative work where artists receive a modest income and don’t become household names.

Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

he Christian faith offers a few truths that make sense of this tension between AI and creativity. The first is human creativity is not mere ornamentation- it is at the very heart of what it means to be made in God’s image. At the very beginning of the Bible, God is Creator. Unlike God, humans cannot make something from nothing. But we can produce wonders that inspire, that reflect the goodness, truth and beauty of the world God created for us. Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign that humans were made for more than utility. We were made for transcendence.

The Christian faith also teaches that human selfishness gets in the way of the transcendental vision God has for us.

The invention of the record player created problems for musicians, but it was the unwillingness of companies to pay musicians fairly for their work that posed the real threat. Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

As AI continues to be adopted, executives join the chorus speaking about the “threat of AI” and the need to prioritise human creativity. Yet the decisions of the same executives value human creativity in financial terms by the compensation (or lack thereof) that real artists receive.

Companies treat new technologies as inevitable– they might even tell employees that those who can’t learn to use new technology will be left behind. But the reality is that companies shape the direction of technological advancement. There is no “neutral” or “inevitable” direction to technology. Technology can solve human problems- but first humans decide what problems need solving. AI may help us solve problems that benefit all of us- like the work being done to synthesise proteins that can have great impacts in medicine and science.

But there is no reason companies must use generative AI for creative work. People may point to money and time saved, shareholder value created. And this is where the real contradiction lies. For creativity is not a problem that needs to be solved, but a gift for us to partake in.

Is This What We Want?

The album by “1000 UK Artists” contains the sound of empty music studios- a future the group fears if musicians are replaced with AI who were trained on their talent. Session musicians, cover artists, violinists who busk in the streets or play in weddings, all are in danger from AI being trained on their hard work for free.

Knowing that technology is never neutral, the album’s title “Is This What We Want?” poses a good question. What kind of world do we want to live in? What should our technology be building towards?

For me, I want a world that encourages real human creativity– the kind given to us by God, the original creative. I want a world where technology isn’t a way for the rich to become richer but for our communities to become better places for human connection. Technology should give us more time to create art, not less. The battle between creativity and AI is in the hands of lawmakers for now. But the battle to end human greed? That’s eternal.