How Arcadia transformed a war machine into a party paradise at Glastonbury

“It feels like it’s really important to evolve,” says Bertie Cole, co-founder and Technical Director of Arcadia when Mixmag gets a sneak peek of The Dragonfly on the festival’s opening day, with the finishing touches still being applied.

As well as looking and sounding incredible, environmental sustainability is an important part of Arcadia’s mission. 2023 marked the first time the stage ran entirely from renewable energy, while repurposing scrap is at the heart of their creative choices. “For us the scrap really leads the way,” explains Bertie, saying they received a tip from a military air base in Cornwall about the helicopter being for sale and were compelled to check it out. Once suspended in the air, the idea of a dragonfly began to form. “It’s been a really enchanting journey for us,” he adds. “It kind of just began by buying a helicopter because it looked cool, and then having the idea that it could be a dragonfly, and then jamming with that, and then suddenly it took shape.

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“We’ve used the scale of that helicopter meticulously to come back to nature, to what dragonflies are really like: the angles of their legs, the way they sit, the size of the head, the eyes, and we’ve always kind used that nature part to steer our design. It’s been really beautiful actually, bringing the scrap and nature into it, and allowing it to flow as a design process.”