Tag Archives: British Ecological Society

Science (and some music) at UK’s Glastonbury Festival from June 25 – 29, 2025

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Lancaster University’s June 6 2025 press release offers a preview of what to expect at Glastonbury’s Science Futures area,

From climate change to robot surgeons, and from spiders to AI and deepfakes, festivalgoers attending this year’s Glastonbury can learn and take inspiration from an entire area specially dedicated to science.

Based in the festival’s Green Futures Field, Science Futures is co-ordinated by Lancaster University’s Professor Emma Sayer, and provides an area of discovery where people can explore many varied ways in which science shapes our lives.

Through a mix of innovative installations, games, music, discussions and demonstrations, Science Futures will offer a chance for people to find out about the science behind new discoveries. It will also provide unique opportunities for people to hear from, and meet, the approachable researchers tackling critical problems and those behind cutting-edge innovations.

The ‘Laboratory’ stage features a packed and varied line-up cutting across different fields of science and technology, including the ‘science behind the Arcadia spider’, Q&A sessions on climate change with Professor Richard Betts MBE of the University of Exeter and Met Office, discussions around the impacts of AI and Deepfakes, as well as music including a ‘Funk and Soil’ DJ set.

The ‘Futurarium’ marquee will host numerous stands and exhibits including an insightful demonstration of some of the highly specialist equipment used by the BBC Natural History Unit to capture their amazing footage of the natural world. Professor Gordon Blair and his team from Lancaster University and UKCEH will offer insights around the carbon footprint and sustainability of the technology and cloud computing we all use everyday called ‘How green is your cloud?’

‘The Sound Canopy’, created by Lancaster University’s Dr Liz Edwards, will take visitors on an audio journey from deep underground to outer space, while an outdoor exhibition called Science, Not Fiction will explore art’s role in science and science’s role in art.

“Running a science area at Glastonbury Festival is just the best thing in the world!” said Science Futures coordinator Professor Sayer.

“It’s fantastic to see how much people enjoy experiencing and discussing science when we swap the lecture theatre for somewhere like the Green Futures Field. The way we present research in Science Futures fits so well with the vibe of the festival – and people love it!”

Professor Betts will also be co-ordinating Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll, a decade-long science engagement collaboration, which started with support from the British Ecological Society and has gone from strength to strength thanks to the involvement of the Universities of Lancaster, Exeter, Oxford and Kent and the Met Office. The “Sex & Bugs” stall has been feature of the Green Futures Field at Glastonbury Festival since 2015.

Professor Betts said: “The Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll stall is always huge fun, we meet so many lovely, enthusiastic festival-goers and have some fantastic conversations about ecology and climate change. I can’t wait to be back!”

Shows on the Laboratory stage will include:

  • BBC Natural History Unit
  • Change the Earth Summit (Glasto Special) with Darren Jones MP
  • The Great Ape Challenge
  • Arcadia – The science behind the spider
  • Professor Richard Betts and guests – climate change Q&A
  • The Nature-Technology relationship with Professor Gordon Blair
  • Ask a scientist brunch
  • Beats of Science with DJ Mike Whitfield aka Funk and Soil
  • Climate songs from Rosie Eade “Folk Pixie”

Stalls at Science Futures will include:

  • Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll’s enthusiastic researchers want to share their fascination for the natural world and make science accessible to everyone. They love music and think scientists should be more approachable – so where better to have a bit of fun with science than at Glastonbury?
  • The Plant Power Station brings the science of sustainable agriculture to life, entertaining and engaging festivalgoers of all ages. In a beautiful marquee, welcoming scientists will lead visitors through a series of games and activities tackling important issues like pollination, pest management, carbon footprints, organic farming, GM crops and food sourcing.
  • The Circus of Climate Horrors explores the effects of a changing atmosphere through carnival sideshow games offering increasing difficulty as the world warms. Build a boat to float on the Sea of CO2; visitors will see for themselves how much gas is produced by everyday activities like driving, barbecuing, or boiling the kettle.

The art exhibition. ‘Science, not fiction’ will be an outside showcase of art in science, and science in art featuring contributions from 11 artists.

For the full Science Futures line-up – and exciting announcements as the festival approaches – follow @sci_futures on Twitter and Instagram.

Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll made its debut in 2013, from their homepage,

Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll brings environmental science to music festivals.

We’re a team of enthusiastic researchers who want to share our fascination for the natural world and make science accessible to everyone. We think scientists should be more approachable and we also love music – so where better to have a bit of fun with science than at music festivals?

Science is all about curiosity, so we do our best to recreate that spirit by turning interesting research into entertaining activities. Anyone can drop by our stall to chat, ask questions, or just take a look around and try their hand at a game or two.

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Although planned as a one-off event to celebrate the Centenary of the British Ecological Society in 2013, Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll has been such a huge success that we continue to tour UK music festivals with our stall – complete with a live colony of bumblebees!

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Here’s a video from the 2013 Wychwood Festival, from Sex & Bugs & Rock ‘n Roll homepage,

Getting back to Glastonbury 2025,

[downloaded from https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/areas/the-green-fields/green-futures/science-futures/]

The last time I featured science at the Glastonbury Festival was in a July 12, 2011 posting “Dirty science at Glastonbury” and, following up on my science and music theme, there was a July 27, 2015 posting “Science and music festivals such as Latitude 2015 and some Guerilla Science.”

Terminal 1

Strictly speaking, this art installation/situationist artwork is not science but the proposition strikes a chord given the rumblings about Canada’s border being an ‘imaginary line’ and the suggestion the country should be annexed by the US. From the 2025 Glastonbury Festival’s Terminal 1 webpage,

In a world where the lines drawn on a map by our ancestors have come to define and divide our world, this is a place without borders that celebrates our shared humanity. Unified by the simple message – NO-ONE IS ILLEGAL.

The Terminal is a deliberately slippery proposition. We are staffed by actors but we’re not ‘theatre’, we play films but we’re not a cinema, we are activists but won’t make you sign a petition. We also sell beer and dance but we’re not a club.

A walk-through situationist artwork disguised as an international airport. It is also angry. But serves its polemic with a side order of slapstick. 

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Unlike President Donald Trump, these artists are not trying to turn the clock back to a time of uninhibited territorial expansion but making the point (as I understand it) that we are all living on and having to share one planet. It seems ironic that Trump and the artists are making the same claim about ‘imaginary lines’ while being entirely at cross purposes.

You can find out more about the music, etc. at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival website.

Dial-a-frog?

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Frog and phone – Credit: Marta Yebra Alvarez

There is a ‘frogphone’ but you won’t be talking or communicating directly with frogs, instead you will get data about them, according to a December 6, 2019 British Ecological Society press release (also on EurekAlert),

Researchers have developed the ‘FrogPhone’, a novel device which allows scientists to call up a frog survey site and monitor them in the wild. The FrogPhone is the world’s first solar-powered remote survey device that relays environmental data to the observer via text messages, whilst conducting real-time remote acoustic surveys over the phone. These findings are presented in the British Ecological Society Journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution today [December 6, 2019].

The FrogPhone introduces a new concept that allows researchers to “call” a frog habitat, any time, from anywhere, once the device has been installed. The device has been developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra and the University of Canberra in collaboration with the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Region Frogwatch Program and the Australian National University.

The FrogPhone utilises 3G/4G cellular mobile data coverage and capitalises on the characteristic wideband audio of mobile phones, which acts as a carrier for frog calls. Real time frog calls can be transmitted across the 3G/4G network infrastructure, directly to the user’s phone. This supports clear sound quality and minimal background noise, allowing users to identify the calls of different frog species.

“We estimate that the device with its current microphone can detect calling frogs from a 100-150m radius” said lead author Dr. Adrian Garrido Sanchis, Associate Lecturer at UNSW Canberra. “The device allows us to monitor the local frog population with more frequency and ease, which is significant as frog species are widely recognised as indicators of environmental health” said the ACT and Region Frogwatch coordinator and co-author, Anke Maria Hoefer.

The FrogPhone unifies both passive acoustic and active monitoring methods, all in a waterproof casing. The system has a large battery capacity coupled to a powerful solar panel. It also contains digital thermal sensors to automatically collect environmental data such as water and air temperature in real-time. The FrogPhone uses an open-source platform which allows any researcher to adapt it to project-specific needs.

The system simulates the main features of a mobile phone device. The FrogPhone accepts incoming calls independently after three seconds. These three seconds allow time to activate the temperature sensors and measure the battery storage levels. All readings then get automatically texted to the caller’s phone.

Acoustic monitoring of animals generally involves either site visits by a researcher or using battery-powered passive acoustic devices, which record calls and store them locally on the device for later analysis. These often require night-time observation, when frogs are most active. Now, when researchers dial a device remotely, the call to the FrogPhone can be recorded indirectly and analysed later.

Ms. Hoefer remarked that “The FrogPhone will help to drastically reduce the costs and risks involved in remote or high intensity surveys. Its use will also minimize potential negative impacts of human presence at survey sites. These benefits are magnified with increasing distance to and inaccessibility of a field site.”

A successful field trial of the device was performed in Canberra from August 2017 to March 2018. Researchers used spectrograms, graphs which allow the visual comparison of the spectrum of frequencies of frog signals over time, to test the recording capabilities of the FrogPhone.

Ms. Hoefer commented that “The spectrogram comparison between the FrogPhone and the standard direct mobile phone methodology in the lab, for the calls of 9 different frog species, and the field tests have proven that the FrogPhone can be successfully used as a new alternative to conduct frog call surveys.”

The use of the current FrogPhone is limited to areas with adequate 3G/4G phone coverage. Secondly, to listen to frogs in a large area, several survey devices would be needed. In addition, it relies on exposure to sunlight.

Future additions to the FrogPhone could include a satellite communications module for poor signal areas, or the use of multidirectional microphones for large areas. Lead author Garrido Sanchis emphasized that “In densely vegetated areas the waterproof case of the FrogPhone allows the device to be installed as a floating device in the middle of a pond, to maximise solar access to recharge the batteries”.

Dr. Garrido Sanchis said “While initially tested in frogs, the technology used for the FrogPhone could easily be extended to capture other animal vocalisation (e.g. insects and mammals), expanding the applicability to a wide range of biodiversity conservation studies”.

Here’s what the FrogPhone looks like onsite,

The FrogPhone installed at the field site. Credit: Kumudu Munasinghe

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

The FrogPhone: A novel device for real‐time frog call monitoring by Adrian, Garrido Sanchis, Lorenzo Bertolelli, Anke Maria Hoefer, Marta Yebra Alvarez, Kumudu Munasinghe. Methods in Ecology and Evolution https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13332 First published [online]: 04 December 2019

This paper is open access.