Big Issue vendors take over Glastonbury 2017

Some of The Big Issue’s most adventurous vendors swapped the high street for the green fields of Somerset to work selling the magazine at Glastonbury.

Four vendors – William from London (below, who has hop-footed it from Westminster after attending the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday), Stuart from Cardiff, Garry from Bristol and Constantine from Carmarthen – enjoyed the fun in the sun while working hard to boost their sales among music revellers at the world’s biggest music festival.

Big Issue vendor Garry proving as popular at #Glastonbury2017 as @jeremycorbyn!

(You can find our hard-working team at Shangri-La! ????) pic.twitter.com/UVJPWrqxwN

— The Big Issue (@BigIssue) June 24, 2017

The Big Issue team were based at the Shangri-La field, where they worked alongside a fantastic new installation created by renowned artist Jim Woodall: a portrait of Birmingham Big Issue vendor Dave, made up entirely of The Big Issue’s magazine covers (below).

“His face was so striking it jumped out at me when I was looking through images,” Woodall explains. “You’re competing with a lot of bold, bombastic things at Glastonbury, so I wanted to create something human and accessible, and thankfully lots of people have stopped to ask more about the vendor and about The Big Issue.

Our hard-working team at #Glastonbury2017, pictured with a giant mural of a Big Issue seller created by an artist exclusively for the biggest festival in the world. Wonderful! ????????????

A post shared by The Big Issue (@bigissueuk) on Jun 25, 2017 at 4:21am PDT

“It seemed a great way of bringing The Big Issue into this year’s theme of recycling, by reusing old magazines.”

I wanted to create something human and accessible

The Big Issue’s partner Shangri-La created the only area at Glastonbury 2017 built from recycled and repurposed materials. Aiming to set a new standard of sustainability at UK festivals, organisers hosted a series of art events, talks and documentaries showing based around the theme of “recycle, reuse and resist.”