Hidden Door 2027 – Call for Submissions
We are delighted to invite artists, performers and makers to reimagine existing or developing work for our 2027 festival.
Hidden Door specialises in turning overlooked and unusual urban spaces into temporary festivals filled with art, music, movement and stories.
Our 2027 venue remains a secret for now, but we’re now inviting visual artists, dance artists and spoken word artists to submit works that could adapt to a range of spaces, and that resonate with the idea of Afterlives of Use.
The deadline for these calls is Thursday 3 December 2026.
Afterlives of Use explores how places, objects, images and stories change meaning when they are moved, reinterpreted, reimagined or put to use again. Bodies carry their own archives of movement and memory, reshaped through experience, repetition, exchange and play.
We’re interested in work that uncovers or invents histories, transforms everyday materials and actions, or unsettles familiar ways of seeing, moving and feeling.
We welcome work that sparks curiosity, raises questions or invites unexpected encounters, helping shape how people experience the festival’s spaces.
What we are looking for
There are many ways into Afterlives of Use. The following prompts suggest some possibilities; they are not requirements or an exhaustive list. Your work may connect with the direction in other ways.
- Changing use: Reuse, repair, and transformation Places, objects and familiar actions finding purposes they were never intended to have.
- Traces and incomplete histories: What survives in bodies, places and memories, what disappears, and how gaps are interpreted through evidence or invention.
- Past, present and imagined futures: Different times meeting within a work, or the past being reconsidered through present concerns.
- Invented functions and strange systems: Objects, roles, rituals or instructions developing unexpected purposes, governed by their own logic
- New contexts and connections: Work taking on new meaning through a different space, audience relationship or art form.
- We are interested in how work shapes a place: how people encounter it, and how work retains its own identities while forming connections beyond them.
We welcome existing work and work in progress that could be presented or adapted for a festival environment. This call does not fund the production of entirely new work.
You can also express an interest in expanding your proposed work through collaboration with artists working in other art forms.
See further details in the below guidelines for each strand.
Find out more and apply
For details of artist fees and support, eligibility, what to submit, key dates and how to apply, please read the guidelines for your art form:
2027 venue and dates
Hidden Door works with buildings at different moments in their lives. With our 2027 venue still to be announced, we’re interested in how your work could adapt to a range of spaces.
We expect the festival to take place in early June 2027, and we hope to confirm the venue and exact dates soon.
Call for other art forms
Over the next few months, we’ll announce further opportunities for filmmakers, theatre practitioners, performers and musicians to apply to be part of the programme.
Subscribe for email updates to hear about future opportunities.