The summer festival season kicks off in earnest this weekend with the annual musical jamboree on the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for those in attendance, the weather forecast is for showers. Some argue that the outlook is just as depressing for the great British festival tradition.

There may be just over two weeks to go before the first act strikes up from the Pyramid Stage but thousands of tickets still remain unsold for this year's Glastonbury Festival.

It is being hailed as the sound of summer 2008 but you might be forgiven for not having heard it. For this year the nation's festivals, clubs and concert venues are about to reverberate to a growing craze – the sound of silence.

From theatrical work to music festivals, good stage management is vital.

From opera to rock, jazz to blues, there are plenty of music events to enjoy this year. Adrian Mourby offers the highlights

The sports photographer Stuart Roy Clarke swapped football for festivals, attending 37 last year alone. In a sneak preview of his new book, e sets the scene for 2008’s summer of love

A highly contemporary comedy, about a trio of stand-up comics spending a weekend at a rock festival and messing up their sex lives in various ways.

Here are the highlights we’ve picked out for the next five months, have a look to see whether you fancy sitting in the cinema or a big, muddy field…

Margaret Hodge, the Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, attacks the Proms, claiming they do not make people from different backgrounds "feel at ease", and whingeing that the world's biggest classical music festival does not strike the right note in multi-cultural Britain. This is presumably because the audience is overwhelmingly white and the televised antics of those dinner-jacketed twerps on the Last Night send around the globe completely the wrong messages about our cultural values.

Blair himself has done much to encourage the demonisation of those who are excluded

The auction website eBay was attacked by a judge yesterday after a woman made £3,021 from sales of fake tickets to Glastonbury music festival.