With over two decades in the game, Coloursfest has a long and storied history. We went back to the first edition with founder Ricky Magowan.

Date published: 25th Jul 2025

Name: Coloursfest

Year started: 2002

Original capacity: Around 8,000

Original location: Braehead Arena, Renfrew, Glasgow, Scotland

First lineup highlights: Dannii Minogue, Tiësto, Tall Paul

For fans of: Raving, Scottish style

 

Where can you catch some of the maddest ravers and hear some of the hardest-hitting sounds from across dance music? That would be Coloursfest, a proudly Scottish festival that doesn’t do things in half measures.

Welcome back to The First, the feature where we take a trip back in time to the very first edition of some of the most beloved festivals around. This time, it’s the turn of Coloursfest, which means we’re warping back to 2002, and a new venue situated next to a shopping centre has popped up between Glasgow and Paisley called Braehead Arena. Sounds like the perfect place to start a festival. 

“Because it’s at the back of a shopping centre, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got 8000 ravers coming down, it’s a mixture of looking after the grannies out for their shop and then having ravers running around them,” begins festival founder Ricky Magowan. With the Scottish weather being temperamental at the best of times, Colours saw an opportunity in Braehead Arena, which would help them beat the forecast. 

(Image credit: Franny Mancini)

“It was a venue that had never been touched before. The beauty of it was that you had the arena, but then a big boardwalk outside by the River Clyde. We can have an outdoor stage with the big [indoor] main arena, so we get the best of both worlds.” The festival managed to find the ideal location, so much so that they’ve never moved from Braehead Arena since the first edition. 

The Colours team had never thrown a festival before, but they weren’t inexperienced, having run events in Glasgow at venues such as The Arches, and stages at other festivals such as Gig On The Green. The biggest learning curve for Magowan and co was the costing of the festival. “These events cost a few bob and you can’t really cut corners. You’ve got to do the right thing and that costs money.” Magowan believes that the best experience you can get in life is just going out and giving things a try. “I’ve learnt that experience is a big thing, you can go and learn everything in college, but the best education you can get is by doing it.”

The team found that they had very few examples of promoters to take inspiration from in Scotland, which further compounded the need for the team to learn as they went on the fly. “When we started, there were no older promoters. There was no one doing what we were doing in that period, Coloursfest was your initial festival you went to when you were 18 or 19. Colours became an entry-level festival and we’ve always liked that.”

The early 2000s saw a need to move on from the commercialised superclubs of the mid to late 90s, and there was an opportunity for them to become Scotland’s only dedicated dance music festival. “It was a time where Creamfields had only started a few years ago, everything was changing and the big festivals were coming in. We wanted to run a multi-genre event because of Scotland’s rich heritage in music. Everyone likes things a bit harder and more vocal, everyone likes a bit of variety,” Magowan says.  The festival landscape was completely different in 2002, where T In The Park was the go-to big festival in Scotland. Colours plugged a gap for dance music lovers. 

The first edition boasted Danii Minogue as a headliner, a coup for the festival that generated lots of press attention. “She had a huge dance record and was blowing up. At first we were unsure but then I remembered that Creamfields had All Saints on, and maybe we could get away with this,” Magowan says. 

Come the day of Minogue’s headline set, and it nearly all went wrong at the last minute. Apparently her artist lanyard had been printed with her name misspelt, which prompted Minogue’s manager to threaten to drop out of the festival. Thankfully, an unlikely saviour appeared in Craig Logan, the lesser-known member of Bros and Minogue’s boyfriend at the time, who managed to calm the situation.

In 2002, the internet wasn’t the most effective form of festival promotion, so DIY methods such as flyering were still the norm, and in Glasgow, you wouldn’t have been able to move without catching a Colours Festival flyer. “You just had to use what was there; there was no textbook, you just had to get the word out. You used to have only one day before someone else put a poster on top of yours.” 

If you’d seen the flyers, you’d have seen a mixture of huge dance names from the 90s/early 2000s, such as 808 State, Graeme Park and Alison Limerick, with upcoming names including Tall Paul and Tiesto. From the off, Magowan could see that the latter was going to have a huge career. “You could see that Tiesto had something about him, even from that early stage he had an aura about him. So, getting him on the first edition was quite amazing.” 

The first edition of Coloursfest was a reflection of the work that they’d done previously, with bookings they’d made at clubs and raves such as Danny Rampling, David Morales and Seb Fontaine all being previous names they’d worked with. They still maintain pride in the first lineup today, with Magowan noting, “When you look at year one, a lot of them could still play today.”

(Image credit: Stuart MacDonald)

They wanted to appeal to as many different aspects of dance music they could, looking to bring in a diverse crowd. But, one of the mainstays of the Coloursfest ethos is crafting the festival towards their home crowd. “We always want to cater for the Glasgow audience and the Scottish audience. There are musical trends up here that aren’t as big in England, so we always try to keep a Scottish element. We always try to bring in Scottish DJs and 24 years later we’re still doing that.”

So, how would Magowan best describe the crowd at Coloursfest? “F****** mental. Full on mental, here we f****** go.” The journey of the festival sums up the Scottish spirit of simply having a go and seeing what happens. From making it up as they go, the festival team have created a mainstay in Scottish culture which has lasted over two decades now. Are there many other countries that can boast more hardcore ravers? “We like a good party, and the DJs will tell you, Coloursfest is one of the best gigs that they do in Glasgow.”

 

Have you been attending Coloursfest since the beginning? If so, they want to hear from you! Get in contact info@colours.co.uk

Tickets are available for this year's edition on Saturday 2nd August towards the bottom of the page.

 

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If you fancy getting yourself to Colours or another UK festival then head to our Festivals page.

 

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