The festival evolved out of a series of club nights, held in the Elephant and Castle area of South London and hosted and organised by Sam Kilcoyne, the teenage son of Barry 7 from Add N to (X) and current member of the band S.C.U.M, after he was refused admission to a Buzzcocks gig for being only 14. These grew popular with preteens and teenagers and even received press coverage in broadsheet national newspapers like The Guardian and the BBC's arts programmes, which reported it as a "youthquake".