Thank you to everyone who came along last night – we had a blast!
Here’s a few nice things people said online:
“Best gig ever!” “Absolutely brilliant this year” “My tip – make sure you get to the sub-basement floor” “Another amazing venue. Totally blown away” “Amazing immersive performances”
Here’s a few pics from the night – 4 more days to come down and explore!
Friday 31 March, 2-8pm Southside Community Centre, 117 Nicholson St
Hidden Door takes place in unique, empty spaces around Edinburgh and this year we’re heading to the iconic offices on Dalkeith Road, the former Scottish Widows HQ, from 31 May to 4 June.
As a local community-run charity we’re keen to speak to people who live and work in the area. Drop into Southside Community Centre next Friday, anytime between 2-8pm, to meet the team, find out more about the festival and how you can get involved.
We would especially like to hear from small local businesses to see how we can benefit you.
The programme for this year’s Hidden Door is now live, as we reveal the first details of an ambitious series of original, immersive performances specially designed for our unique venue, plus live music from Porridge Radio, Hot 8 Brass Band, Max Cooper, NiNE8 and Pillow Queens.
We’re transforming the former Scottish Widows office complex on Dalkeith Road for a five-day spectacular more immersive and atmospheric than any Hidden Door so far.
The Complex will host a diverse live music and spoken word programme alongside a collection of visual art from Scotland’s best emerging artists. Hidden Door 2023 runs from Wednesday 31 May to Sunday 4 June.
ENVIRONMENTS
Responding to the vast interior spaces, Hidden Door presents a series of Environments for the audience to explore as they venture deeper into the former office building. Featuring live music, dance, film projections, set design and even opera, each Environment brings together some of the most visionary emerging artists to talk about our natural world in a unique and imaginative way.The Environments will create an immersive journey – responding to the world around us and the impact we’ve had on it – and inviting the audiences to explore The Complex, with several surprises along the way.
An eclectic mix of bands will be filling three performance spaces this year, offering almost every genre of music you can imagine.Indie rock band Porridge Radio, Grammy-winning Hot 8 Brass Band, electronica and techno producer Max Cooper, radical pop collective NiNE8, and Irish rock band Pillow Queens will take to the Cabaret Stage.Also performing in the former canteen will be post-punk outfit Pozi, doom jazz trio AKU!, jazz collective Corto.alto, alt-pop singer Berta Kennedy, Edinburgh band Dinosaur 94, and post-punk electronica Sweaty Palms.The Cabaret Stage will culminate each night with a party featuring the likes of brass band Blue Giant Orkestar, sax and drums duo O., and utopian synth duo Free Love.Down in the Loading Bay stage, indie band DEADLETTER, rap artist Bemz and alt musician Rozi Plain will entertain audiences. Over the five days, they’ll be joined by indie band Wombo, American rock band Flasher, hip hop artist Billy Got Waves, rapper and singer Jelani Blackman and outsider pop outfit The Microband.In the Club Space, music label Paradise Palms, Afro-Latin club night Samedia Shebeen and women and non-binary DJ collectives Sisu and EPiKA will each host residencies showcasing their roster of talent and keeping the tunes coming until closing time.
On display inside The Complex will be visual art from a wide range of artists practising in Scotland, much of which will explore the same issues as the Environments.A series of interactive installation pieces from Becky Hunter, Chell Young, Elvey Stedman, Evie Rose Thornton, Kirsten Millar, Scott Hunter, and Soorin Shin will explore ideas of climate change and industry.Also on display will be photography from Emily Nicholl, abstract art from Iain H Williams, industrial art from James Sinfield, an installation from Jo Fleming Smith, object art from Joan Smith, textile art from Laura Lees, etchings from Madeline Mackay, found billboards from Martin Elden, ice-inspired hangings from Mary Walters, ink drawings from Natasha Russell, sculpture from Ross Andrew Spencer, paintings from Ryan Cairns, and sculpture from Tim Taylor.Work from recent art school graduates Aimee Finlay, Alice Sherlock, Amy Kim Grogan, Ben Caro and Kat Culter-MacKenzie, Ciaran Cannon, Coire Simpson, Dhira Chakraborty, Irene Aldazabal, Leah Wood, Sarah Phelan and Shae Myles will also be on display.
This year’s poetry and spoken word programme will showcase a diverse group of new and developing performers from across Scotland and beyond.On the first day of the festival, writer, poet and researcher Caitlin Stobie will share her writing, and Clare O’Brien will present her work inspired by the natural world and the creatures that wander through it. Queer writer and spoken word poet Gray Crosbie makes their return to Hidden Door, as does Sean Wai Keung presenting his reflections on identity and migration.Thursday 1 June sees poet and performance maker Bibi June present post-apocalyptic stories on climate change, while actor and poet Rupert Smith takes inspiration from Shakespeare into his work. Jay Whittaker will perform her irreverent, unsentimental poems looking at mortality, illness and loss.On Friday 2 June, Irish poet Éadaoín Lynch will perform from their debut poetry pamphlet, and Genevieve Carver will present her work in response to dolphins, porpoises and seals. British-Sudanese lyricist and performance poet Zaki El-Salahi will take to the stage to perform their work rooted in rap, dub poetry and the role of MC culture in grassroots black British consciousness. Sal will perform her work entangling trans and chronically ill experiences with organic processes of decay and birth.Saturday sees queer Latinx writer Andrés N Ordorica share his writing on the diasporic experience, and Ross McCleary performs his piece advocating for refilling of the Nor Loch. Edinburgh-based US poet Allie Kerper will also perform.The last day of Hidden Door will have performances from Scottish-Canadian poet Patrick James Errington, and Glasgow’s Oliver Robertson. Janette Ayachi will share her musings on searching landscapes and human connection, and Elspeth Wilson will celebrate joy from a marginalised perspective.
Interested in writing about art? Discuss the visual art at Hidden Door, share ideas on writing and have your review published on our website.
We’re running a free writing workshop where you’ll learn about the practice of reviewing artworks. Explore the site as a group then create your own piece of writing which will be featured on our website.The event is open to anyone with a keen interest in contemporary visual art and critical writing, and are looking to develop their writing skills in a supportive and discursive environment.
Applications now open to be part of Hidden Door 2022
Our festivals showcase theatre, spoken word, visual art, dance and music by local and international artists, and aims to create a platform to bring the arts to a wider audience.
Hidden Door is a volunteer-run charity, with our work funded through ticket sales, sponsorship and fundraising. All money goes straight back into the festival and paying our creative contributors and artists.
This year we’re bringing the old Royal High School on Calton Hill to life for a ten day festival of live music, visual art, dance, theatre and spoken word. The festival will completely transform the entire complex from 9 – 18 June 2022.
We’re looking for friendly faces to help us with a range of duties before, during and after the festival and to help make this the most exciting Hidden Door Festival yet.
We’re looking for self-motivated team members for a range of duties before, during and after the festival such as:
Clearing and preparing the site before the festival
Venue building and set up
Event stewarding, greeting visitors and crowd control
Invigilating artwork installations across the sites
Box office support
Stage management and artist support
Checking wristbands and tickets
Queue management and monitoring noise levels
Cleaning up after the festival
Supervising gates and access points to the festival
Why volunteer?
FREE access to the festival (dependent upon hours volunteered)
The chance to work with an experienced team and learn new skills
An opportunity to get involved in the local arts scene and work with a great line-up of artists and contributors
Be a part of the festival team, make friends and meet new people
If you aren’t sure if volunteering is for you, or would like to understand a bit more about what’s involved, please email hello@hiddendoorarts.org and we’ll be happy to help.
Hidden Door will return in 2022, breathing life into a secret new location in Edinburgh. We are now inviting visual artists to get involved.
For next year’s festival we’ve found a stunning, forgotten complex in the city centre which we plan to transform into live music venues and performance spaces for theatre, dance and spoken word, alongside pop-up bars and a multitude of art exhibition and installation spaces.
We’ll reveal more about our new venue in the new year, but for now we are inviting submissions to our visual art programme; seeking innovative and striking projects across a variety of artistic disciplines.
Our main aim is to create opportunities for artists so we are particularly looking for projects that allow artists to develop their practice and encourage new graduates and emerging artists to apply. We do however welcome applications from artists at any stage in their career.
Each project selected will receive a fee of £500 towards the artist’s time plus project expenses, as well as free access to the festival.
The deadline for visual art submissions is Monday 24 January – please help us spread the word and share this with the creatives in your life!
We’ll be launching our calls for other art forms in the New Year.
Got your tickets for the Hidden Door Opening Party?? We’ve got some very special things lined up …
Our festival kicks off with a reprise of The Call: an inspiring project born in lockdown with composer Esther Swift conducting 20 of the best Scottish musicians and from across the gasworks site with huge flags.
The stages will burst to life with performances by Edinburgh-based pop-luminaries MALKA and Hamish Hawk, plus magical singer-songwriter Tiberius b, all paving the way for one of Scotland’s most significant talents, Pictish Trail.
We fully expect the opening night to be the celebration we have all been waiting for.
Also look out for spoken word from Jen McGregor and check out Something Smashing – a live performance that brings together musicians and dancers, a platform for improvisers and the audience to explore the unexpected!
And be sure to explore the whole site to discover visual works from over 30 artists!
HIDDEN Door has announced details of more than 20 visual art graduates whose work will feature at this year’s festival.
The news comes as a crowdfunder to help transform a disused warehouse into a vast exhibition space for the graduates’ work reaches 20% of its target.
With last year’s festival cancelled due to the pandemic, the 2021 event is taking place mostly outdoors, in the shadow of the Granton Gasworks in North Edinburgh. But with the addition of the huge warehouse, just over the road from the main festival site, the footprint of the festival is effectively doubled.
To support the plans, Hidden Door have launched a crowdfunder to raise £10,000, with supporters able to pick from a wide range of rewards including an immersive treasure hunt experience through the festival grounds, exclusive hand-printed T-shirts from Acorn Print Studio, VIP passes for the festival and limited edition prints by Hidden Door artists.
The warehouse we plan to transform
The visual artists taking part in the Hidden Door Graduate Exhibition are:
Adela Kaluzinska, Alliyah Enyo, Becky Brewis, Cara Kennedy, Csian Jemecel Canave, Eilidh Nicoll, Elvey Stedman, Jack Waygood, Josie KO, Katelyn Grant, Keziah Macneill, Kirsten Millar, Leah Moodie, Madeleine Kaye, Martha Stefani-Bose, Martin Crawford, Mclaughlin + Williamson, Miriam Levi, Molly Kent, Paria Goodarzi, Rhona Sword, Sam M Harley, Scott Hunter and Verity Church.
They all graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art, Grays School of Art, University of Dundee, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and Edinburgh Napier University in 2020 or 2021.
The artists were chosen from Hidden Door’s Graduate Support Network, launched earlier this year to support recent graduates. These artists will be paid for their work through the proceeds raised from this year’s Crowdfunder. For many of them, it will be their first paid creative opportunity.
Jill Martin Boulalaxai, Visual Art Curator,said: “Hidden Door is committed to supporting emerging creative talent, providing a platform for showcasing work and collaborative projects.
“The graduate exhibition at this year’s festival is the first of many exciting opportunities being made available through our Graduate Support Network. We really hope people will get on board with our vision and help us transform this incredible space.”
Opening daily from Wednesday 15 – Sunday 19 September, the Granton Gasworks site will feature two stages for live music and other performances, with dynamic lighting on the giant gasholder to be programmed in time with the music to create a stunning visual experience for festival-goers.
The neighbouring warehouse will be home to the art exhibition and a number of performances.
HIDDEN Door have revealed plans to transform a disused warehouse into a vast exhibition and performance space as part of their 2021 arts festival in Granton this September.
The festival group is launching a crowdfunder to pay for use of the warehouse space. They explain:
This year’s five day festival is taking place outdoors, on land next to the Granton Gasworks, from 15 – 19 September. However, the open air venue isn’t suitable for visual art exhibitions, so we have now got the chance to make use of a nearby warehouse as well, if we can raise the necessary funds to make it happen.
The additional venue will double the footprint of the festival, allowing us to exhibit the work of recent art graduates whose degree shows were cancelled due to COVID-19. The graduates, proud parents and audience members alike will be able to immerse themselves in the exhibition experience whilst staying safe and covid-compliant.
To support the plans, we are set to launch a crowdfunder to raise £10,000, with supporters able to pick from a wide range of rewards including an immersive treasure hunt experience through the festival grounds, exclusive hand-printed T-shirts from Acorn Print Studio, VIP passes for the festival and limited edition prints by Hidden Door artists.
The visual artists will be chosen from Hidden Door’s Graduate Support Network, launched earlier this year to support recent graduates. These artists will be paid for their work through the proceeds raised from this year’s Crowdfunder. For many of them, it will be their first paid creative opportunity.
Hannah Stewart,Project Manager,said: “Graduates across Scotland have missed out on the opportunity to exhibit their work because of the onset of a global pandemic. This has greatly impacted their introduction to the industry and their subsequent livelihood.
“It goes without saying that the last 16 months have been challenging for everyone, especially the Arts and Culture sector. These artists are not only trying to establish themselves and their career, but to reinforce the importance and value of art and culture during these unprecedented times.
“As a festival that celebrates the artistic integrity of Scotland and the wider UK, it is Hidden Door’s duty to help alleviate these artists’ feelings of being devalued, discouraged and despairing.
“We at Hidden Door want to help give these emerging artists the exhibition they deserve. We also want to make sure Scotland doesn’t miss out on the fresh creativity and drive that enriches the country.
“We have the venue and we’ve found the talent; we just need the community’s support to make it happen!”
The crowdfunding campaign will be launched on Kickstarter soon.
Hidden Door Festival 2021 is heading to Granton Gasworks, with the festival taking place in the shadow of the historic gas holder.The site at West Shore Road will be transformed into an outdoor celebration of music, visual art, theatre, dance and spoken word from 15 – 19 September 2021.
Organisers plan on building two stages for music performances, lighting up the gas holder to create a dramatic backdrop, with sculptures displayed throughout the site.
The large, open space will allow Hidden Door 2021 to be flexible, adapting to comply with the coronavirus restrictions in place at the time.
Over five days, the event will showcase the work of at least 30 graduates, four site artists, eight dance groups and two theatre companies, highlighting some of the best emerging talent in Scotland.
David Martin, Creative Director of Hidden Door, said: “Taking on the site of the Granton Gasworks is an exciting opportunity for Hidden Door to adapt, as we need to, in order to start bringing live events back to the city. We are used to working in the nooks and crannies of disused buildings, so moving to a big open site like this is really liberating!
“We are designing the event so that there will be enough space for everyone to be safe and to be able to accommodate social distancing if we still need to work with those restrictions, but the epic nature of the site, with the incredible gas tower landmark looming over us, means we will be able to create a spectacle and an atmosphere, and bring about the wow-factor that our audience expects from a Hidden Door venue.
“We can’t wait to get on site and start turning it into a creative and joyful showcase of Scotland’s emerging talent. Early career artists and performers have been so badly affected by the pandemic, so they are front and centre for this event, and we are looking forward to showing how much talent there is to celebrate.”
Edinburgh College, who occupy the area close to the Gasworks where the festival will be held, are enthusiastically welcoming the festival on to the site. As well as opening the gates to Hidden Door, they hope to use the festival as a training opportunity for students on a number of courses.
Jakki Jeffery, Head of Creative Industries at Edinburgh College, said: “It’s fantastic that Hidden Door have chosen this site close to the iconic Granton Gasworks to host their 2021 festival.
“It will be wonderful to see the space transformed to showcase creative talent which we hope our students can play a part in, and take inspiration and experience from to boost their future careers.”
Tickets
Tickets are available via www.hiddendoorblog.org/tickets or from Citizen Ticket. Once the full programme is announced, ticket holders will be able to select which days they would like to attend.
