I’ve known Kieran Delaney for years — through his club night Society and various festival takeovers. But despite sharing more than a few hours on the dancefloor together, I had no idea this part of his story existed until he told me about it at a friend’s wedding, after he’d heard this podcast.
I actually think this might be exactly why All Gone Wrong exists.
Kieran and his mum built Offset - a DIY camping festival at the end of the Central line in Essex - from pretty much nothing. Zero percent credit cards, personal loans, a PO box for cassette tape entries, and a lineup that somehow included The xx, Metronomy, Gang of Four and Liquid Liquid.
Over three years, Kieran navigated ludicrous band riders, two cars written off in the weeks before one festival, a police helicopter circling before he’d worked out what was happening on the ground, a misreported riot, and a staging company who slept in their cab all night in gale force winds just to give the festival a chance of happening. On the Monday morning after it was all over - exhausted, soaked, finished - he watched the heras fencing come down before the litter pick was complete, and spent the next few hours retrieving it from the forest.
The festival didn’t survive. But what he learned from it did.
Kieran now runs FlatPlan, a tech company used by some of the world’s biggest media publishers.
This episode is about three years of things going wrong -and what you actually learn when they do. It’s also a quietly devastating love letter to DIY culture, and what’s been lost as the industry has consolidated around it.
Episode 4 is out now.
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