Zeno Thinks:Multigenerational Mayhem: What Glastonbury Can Teach Us About Culture and Connection

The Glastonbury line-up drops. Cue the moaning.

Every year… it’s as reliable as a downpour in Pilton. Someone’s too mainstream. Someone else isn’t mainstream enough. And once again, the headliners have somehow offended both the 60-year-old Neil Young fan and the Gen Z techno obsessive in one fell swoop.

But the annual whinge-fest isn’t just noise, it tells us something deeper about Glastonbury and the UK culture it reflects. Yes, there’s a pretty clear white, middle-class skew – but even despite that, Glasto remains one of the last genuinely shared cultural spaces, where wildly different people, tastes and tribes are forced to co-exist. Often uncomfortably. And that’s what makes it interesting.

At Glasto, contradictions collide on a muddy field and somehow it works beautifully. Go for a stroll and you’re bound to spot:

• Teens in the Dance Village, decked out in bucket hats and TikTok-ready streetwear, vibing to 140bpm and pre-mixed vodka Red Bull
• Veteran hippies in Greenfields, sporting hemp waistcoats and hand-drums, preaching peace and herbal remedies to anyone who’ll listen
• Exhausted parents, towing toddlers in trollies through six inches of sludge, hoping the Kidzfield buys them an hour of peace and/or a cider
• Glasto-lifers, whose spiritual home is somewhere between the Stone Circle and The Glade, still holding on to the belief that music can change the world
• And yes, the corporate types, fresh from a life-changing secret set, suddenly inspired to turn it all into a pitch deck

And that’s before the headliner debates even kick off – with Gen Xers explaining what Pulp really meant to them (secret Pyramid set?), while their kids ask if Jarvis Cocker is the guy who flashed his bum at the BRITs.

Nowadays cynicism is social currency, especially online, but it’s also camouflage.

It’s coded language that signals what kind of music we like, what era we belong to, and how we want to be seen. Cynicism lets us participate in conversation without committing to a tribe. After all, it’s much easier to roll your eyes than admit you had a little cry watching Coldplay (not me to be clear, just an example).

But behind the eye-rolls, something beautiful happens: people of all ages and cultures interact in ways they normally wouldn’t. Teenagers discover 70s soul at West Holts. Boomers accidentally wander into a post-dubstep jungle rave at midnight. 

So, forget “target demographics” for a moment. Glastonbury isn’t neat audience segmentation – it's a cultural Petri dish:

One person’s crying at Brandi Carlile, then raving at 4am. That’s the reality brands need to acknowledge – subcultures are fluid and identities are layered. The neat audience segments in your strategy deck don’t hold up in a field full of banjos and basslines. Big, emotional moments cut across generations and genres, and that shared experience beats precision targeting every time.

The vast majority aren’t anti-brand, but they can smell a sales pitch a mile off. So, be useful. Be human. Then let’s get back to the music. And remember: the grime kids and Greenpeace staff in the same queue for chips and (vegan) gravy? That’s the point. Embrace the mix. Don’t try to flatten it.

For all the cynicism, Glastonbury remains a space where generations and genres bump into each other (sometimes literally) and share something meaningful.

For marketers, that’s not a challenge to overcome, it’s a reality to embrace. Because in a world that increasingly feels siloed and segmented, festivals are one of the last spaces where contradiction is encouraged – where your brand doesn’t need to choose an audience but can connect with many.

Just don’t expect everyone to agree on the headliner.