The organisers of a controversial open-air dance music festival planned for the south of Herefordshire later this month have previously boasted of evading police when holding unlicensed events, it has emerged.
PullUp Recordings of south Wales advertises Gemfest 2024 at Great Howle Farm near Howle Hill over the weekend of June 14-16.
In a video posted on Instagram last October, event organisers say they were prevented from “throwing a rave in a kebab shop” in Cardiff after the police “got wind” of it less than 24 hours before.
Police then also shut down an attempt to relocate the event to another kebab shop in the city five minutes before it was due to start, the video says.
Eventually the event “was a goer” in a youth hostel in the city, hosting “over 100 ravers without anyone being any the wiser”, the unnamed organiser says.
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An undated TikTok video published by the record label also claims “hundreds more were on their way” to one of its raves in an undisclosed location, “before police managed to shut it down just before midnight”.
@pullup.recordings Mental 2 weeks #pulluppopup ♬ original sound - PullUp Recordings
Another on PullUp's TikTok channel shows a staff member dumping a bag of what appear to be empty drinks cans on a post box.
@pullup.recordings Menace to society
♬ original sound - bhaddiewest
Neither police nor council trading standards officers have objected to the event, whose licence application will be decided on by councillors this Friday, prompted by widespread local opposition to it.
West Mercia Police was asked for comment.
Meanwhile a letter from the event's organisers posted on Walford parish council's website says that although the licensing application is based on a notional 1,500 guests, the event is expected to draw a “target attendee number” of 1,000 at its peak on the Saturday, with 4-500 camping.
Event organiser and PullUp Recordings co-founder Samuel Southan wrote that despite as “overwhelmingly positive response” to the event proposals, “we have had two instances of verbal abuse directed toward our team – one of these shockingly towards an uninvolved family member”.
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