To bring the spirit of Glastonbury to its customers, London Art Bar is hosting a full ‘indoor festival’ on the 29th June and will be screening the much-anticipated Sunday of the festival.

Gareth Shelton, Co-Founder of The London Art Bar, told music licensing brand PPL PRS that atmosphere and creating a ‘shared experience’ is the key for hospitality businesses to pull in

Gareth Shelton, co-founder, The London Art Bar

In conversation with PPL PRS, Gareth Shelton said:

“The London Art Bar is an event space and cocktail bar between Holborn and Chancery Lane. We opened just after the pandemic and rather than being a bar which happens to run events, we’re very much an event space that happens to have a bar. Most of our activity is screenings or sip-and-paint events, meet-ups or anything else that’s a little bit different.

“What we like to do for our screenings is make events a bit immersive. For instance, when we screen the movie Pride in June, there’ll be rainbows everywhere, or in the past when we’ve hosted Eurovision screenings, there are flags from all participating countries around the venue.

“We’re screening the Sunday of Glastonbury Festival – sort of in place of Eurovision screenings, where the contest has become controversial – and planning a full ‘indoor festival’ from 1:30 on the 29th of June.

“We’ll recreate the festival vibe with a few haystacks for seating (which I think our cleaner will resent us for the next day) and swap glassware for paper cups, so it feels like you’re at a festival. I think it’ll be a really fun day. We haven’t hired a portaloo for the day though – I think our customers will thank us for that!

“I think one of the things we’ve seen after the pandemic is that people buy tickets for stuff a lot more last minute than they used to so it can be a bit of a gamble, unless you find the perfect cultural moment. For example, we hosted a watch party for the finale of The Traitors earlier this year which was a sell-out.