By Mia Dias Laia Spragg
So far, 2025 has been an amazing year for festivals in the UK. This year’s festival season kicked off with The 1975, Olivia Rodrigo, and Neil Young headlining Glastonbury in June. Reading & Leeds’ line-up was star-studded and Download’s lineup stood out to be a goldmine for rock and heavy-metal fans. The main stages of a festival are, of course, the main event – but what non-music events have been taking place at some of the UK’s biggest festivals? Stepping away from the limelight, let’s dive into the best non-music activities of this years’ festivals:
Glastonbury: Greencrafts Village
“Make, connect, inspire”
Starting off with the expansive 900-acre festival that is Glastonbury, Greencrafts village is an artistic space to unleash your creativity before the festival bustle begins. Opening at 10am (early for most festival-goers) and garnering large audiences every year, Greencrafts village celebrates arts and crafts by offering hands-on workshops. Priding themselves on their eco-friendly and sustainable ethos, Greencrafts is an opportunity to learn about and practice crafts from woodwork to pottery. Returning to Glastonbury each year since 1993, you can also find Greencrafts village providing a “haven of calm” at festivals All Together Now and Electric Picnic.
Latitude Festival: The Theatre Arena
“In the Theatre Arena, storytelling comes alive through breath-taking performances that challenge, inspire, and captivate”
Whether you’re a theatre-lover, cabaret enthusiast, or an avid fan of spoken word poetry, the Theatre Arena at Latitude has it all. Located in Henham Park Forest within a 500-capacity arena, 2025’s festival-goers saw award-winning Australian acts dominate the stage presented by highly-acclaimed Australian theatre organisation, House of Oz. Australian circus company Gravity & Other Myths (@gomcircus) wowed audiences with spectacular acrobatics, emphasising through their performances how the art of acrobatics is “a love letter to our bodies and the amazing things they let us do every day”. Previous years have seen performances from the renowned Royal Shakespeare Company, the majorly talented Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and many other top-quality acts.
Boardmasters: The Headland Skate Ramp
“Dive into an adrenaline-fueled spectacle with the return of the much-loved skate ramp”
Presented by the holy-grail of skateboards this year, Santa Cruz visited the sandy shores of Fistral Beach in Cornwall for four days of fun and competition. The Headland Skate Ramp welcomes both newbies and seasoned skaters, so whether you’re looking to get started, try out a workshop, or compete against others, there are plenty of opportunities. This seems like the perfect place to harness your skills, or just sit back and enjoy the show against the coastal backdrop of Fistral beach.
Wilderness: Long Table Banquets
“Indulge yourself and settle in for two and a half hours of culinary craft from some of the finest chefs in the world”.
Long Table Banquets brings fine-dining to the festival experience, and this celebration of food attracts some of the most respected chefs in the field. 2025 saw Bake-off icon Prue Leith, Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett, and rapper-turned-Sunday roast champion, Professor Green (just to name a few), craft impressive menus. British-Syrian chef Imad Alarnab’s menu looked particularly appetising to me, with hummus, falafel, and bamya on the menu; a dish containing okra in spiced tomato sauce with cumin. Wilderness’ Long Table Banquets is a must if you’re looking to level up your festival diet from more than homemade sandwiches.
Glastonbury: The Apocalypse Museum @ Greenpeace
“A museum about how to avoid the end of the world from the curators of the Museum of Neoliberalism, Darren Cullen and Gavin Grindon”.
You may have come across the instagram account @spellingmistakescostlives before, headed by British-Irish activist and artist Darren Cullen. From crafting thought-provoking, satire pieces often criticising AI, Elon Musk, and the UK government for it’s compliance towards the on-going genocide in Palestine, Cullen and Grindon parterned with Greenpeace for their instillation of the Apocalypse Museum and ‘The Hell Bus’ at Glastonbury 2025. Located in the Greenpeace field, ‘The Hell Bus’ is “a pre-apocalyptic marketing suite about oil company greenwashing,” specifically honing in on oil-company Shell and its contribution to global warming. Cullen and Grindon’s 2025 Apocalypse Museum also featured daily talks and workshops, some examples being an anti-surveillance makeup workshop, tactics for how to make activist art, and a talk from political cartoonist and author, Kate Evans. Festivals are a place for bringing people together on the common-ground of music and entertainment–but festivals are also an important place for activism.
Green Man: Comedy
“Both stand-up royalty and ascendant new stars are set to keep the merriment flowing”.
Located in Wales’ breathtaking Brecon Beacons, Green Man’s 2025 comedy line-up showcased some real treasures. Some stand-out names consisted of Wales’ very own Kiri Pritchard McLean, Olga Koch, Harriet Dyer, and Stewart Lee. As well as these, a rich line-up consisting of 35 other comics graced the stage leaving plenty of options. In their review of 2024’s comedy line-up, British Comedy Guide praised Green Man, stating – “comedy is so often confined to a darkened tent, but at Green Man it seems to have seeped into the very being of the festival itself”. Green Man is definitely up there with the most richly varied festivals, with 10 different venues to check out. And where better to spend 3 days of laughs than within Brecon Beacons?
Surround Sound 