Hidden Door Festival first appeared in 2014 as a pop-up music and art festival, utilising distinctive disused spaces in the city of Edinburgh. It has since grown to become one of Scotland’s most highly regarded independent festivals, recently winning the prestigious Visit Scotland Thistle Award for Best Festival or Cultural Event for Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders 2017.
The festival has become known for its amazing venues, turning disused spaces into unique high-impact performance spaces for the duration of the 10-day festival. For Hidden Door 2017, the festival was staged in a derelict but beautiful 1400-capacity theatre in the Leith area of the city which had been abandoned for nearly 30 years. The theatre was brought back to life for the festival and proved to be an incredible live music venue.
Hidden Door will return there for its 2018 edition from 25 May – 3 June, as part of a dynamic campaign to get this amazing music venue up and running for good to become a sustainable live music venue for Edinburgh, which the city badly needs. We are looking to work with acts who wish to support this campaign and help make it happen.
See below for press reviews of the 2017 festival in the Leith Theatre.
Hidden Door is a non-profit organisation, and all proceeds go into setting up the temporary venue and the cross-arts programme.
The Festival involves visual art, theatre, dance and film as well as its central programme of live music, and was set up by young creatives in Edinburgh to support emerging artists making new work. Hidden Door brings together some of the most dynamic emerging talent from across Scotland and beyond and supports their projects with revenue generated from the live music ticket sales, as well as bars, sponsorship etc.
This model is core to Hidden Door and makes it unique as a festival. We are looking for artists who are interested in being a part of developing this vision.
Hidden Door has grown from humble beginnings and is still growing.
So far we have worked with:
“Leith Theatre is Scotland’s best new live music venue. Let’s do everything we can to keep it going”… The List, June 2017
“Thanks to the tireless efforts of Leith Theatre Trust and Hidden Door, the 1400-capacity hall is back in action – and it’s incredible” – The List, June 2017
“Hidden Door’s opening gig last Friday was a revelation” – The List, June 2017
“If you live in Edinburgh and you have even a passing interest in live music, you need to get to the Hidden Door Festival at Leith Theatre before it finishes this weekend. Honestly, drop everything and make time. If you have kids, take them during the day for a wander round and a look at some free visual art. This place is incredible. Not a ‘gosh, that’s interesting, I didn’t know this was here’ kind of incredible; more ‘hold on, this is the best live music venue in Scotland outside of the Barrowlands and it’s been used for Council storage and gathering pigeon shit for 30 years? That’s obscene!” – The List, June 2017
“An inspiring and successful festival, which perfectly demonstrated the capabilities of the gorgeous old Leith Theatre as a living, breathing concert venue. Ad-hoc but ingeniously curated art and performance” – David Pollock, The Scotsman, June 2017
Hidden Door aims to create a high impact audience-experience, and we offer bands the opportunity to perform with fully immersive, high quality projected visuals. These can be provided by our in-house artists or we can work with visuals provided by the acts, or a mixture of both. We have a range of state-of-the art 20k projectors mapped intelligently to the stage, proscenium arch and surrounding space- and full technical support. We can create or deliver a bespoke visual dimension to the set that will blow the audience away.
We also pride ourselves in being able to offer a great experience to all bands and musicians playing the festival, providing a comfortable back stage experience and VIP treatment from the moment they arrive. Artists love playing at Hidden Door – enjoy our famous Scottish hospitality!