It’s now exactly three months until we welcome 200,000 people back to Worthy Farm for this year’s Glastonbury festival. This is the point in the year where the office at the farm is alive at all hours with fantastic plans and a constant flow of meetings. We are very lucky to have such a special team to make it happen, coming through every day with even more ideas than last year: more ambitious, more fire, more metal, bigger sculptures, more music and more campaigning.

Registering to vote then registering your postal or proxy vote isn't complicated or time-consuming Emily Eavis, Glastonbury festival

But it’s also going to be a rather different year. On the Thursday of this year’s festival – the day after the gates open and at a point when almost all our ticket holders will have arrived – the UK will decide whether or not it wants to remain as part of the European Union. It is, without question, one of the most important votes we’ll ever have to cast. And the result is likely to be announced the following day, around the time that the first acts perform on the Pyramid Stage. We will, it’s fair to say, be paying close attention. As, no doubt, will our audience.

At Glastonbury we are very proud of our long history of engaging our audience in politics and activism. We say it every year, but we really do try to make Glastonbury festival a beacon of how things can be better, opening hearts and minds to different ways of seeing the world: greener, cleaner, fairer, kinder, a lot more peaceful and a lot more fun.

Emily Eavis at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury . Photograph: Alex Lake/The Guardian

So, we weren’t too surprised when ticketholders began to get in touch with us about the referendum, long before its date had even been announced. They wanted to know whether they’d be able to vote at the festival if it did clash with the referendum. We checked with the Electoral Commission and they confirmed that, no, it will not be possible, as people must vote in the constituency they’re registered in.

But, of course, that certainly does not mean that the people coming can’t – or shouldn’t – vote on 23 June. The day that the referendum date was announced, we began our campaign to encourage everyone coming to the festival to register for either a postal vote (which is what I’ve done) or a proxy vote (where you nominate someone to do it for you). And we’ll be continuing that right up until the cut-off dates, including emailing every ticketholder with the information on how to vote. Those details are also at the bottom of this blog.

Registering to vote and then registering for your postal or proxy vote isn’t complicated or time-consuming. And this is a decision that really will affect the lives of everyone in the UK. It would, frankly, be a bit daft not to have your say.

How you vote is a huge decision, and one which I think we all need to make for ourselves. To me, that means reading and listening and talking about it until you’ve made an informed choice. Clearly this campaign is going to be emotive and divisive, but I hope people will take the time to consider the arguments properly, rather than resorting to knee-jerk reactions.

It’s strange to think that, on that Friday morning of this year’s Glastonbury, so many people will awake in these fields to discover the result of the referendum. Whichever way it goes, many thousands of those people will be very unhappy with the decision that the nation has made. But imagine how much worse they’ll feel if they realise they could have made a difference, yet didn’t make use of their vote.

The view from Glastonbury … whatever their political view, festivalgoers are encouraged to vote on 23 June. Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA

How to vote in the EU referendum

To take part in the EU referendum you must be registered to vote by Tuesday 7 June. You can register to vote here. To check whether you are already registered to vote, you will need to contact your local electoral registration office. To find the contact details, enter your postcode in the Your local area section here.

To vote by post in the EU referendum, voters in Great Britain will have to submit a postal vote application by 5pm on Wednesday 8 June 2016, while voters in Northern Ireland will need to submit a postal vote application by 5pm on Friday 3 June 2016. You can download the form here.

Voting by proxy means that you appoint someone you trust to vote on your behalf. The person that you appoint as a proxy must also be registered to vote. The deadline for applications to vote by proxy int the EU referendum in Great Britain is 5pm, Wednesday 15 June. The deadline for applications to vote by proxy in Northern Ireland is 5pm, Friday 3 June 2016. You can download the form here.