Hidden Door 2025 – Call for Submissions

Hidden Door 2025 will take place from Wednesday 11th to Sunday 15th June 2025, and we are now inviting artists to submit proposals.

We open up forgotten urban spaces for the public to explore and discover incredible music, art, theatre, film, dance, spoken word and more. In 2025 we will be transforming The Paper Factory, a huge industrial site in the west of Edinburgh.

Be part of this immersive, multi-art-form festival that celebrates new, emerging, and breakthrough talent in Scotland.

Open calls

Our open call for Poetry and Spoken Word is live until Sunday 23 February.

Our open calls for Dance and Visual Art closed on Sunday 26 January 2025. Thank you to everyone who applied – we’ll be in touch soon.

We will open further calls for other art forms shortly. Sign up to our newsletter for all the latest updates.

2025 theme

Our theme for 2025 is “The Building as a Myth”

Submissions should explore one or more of these sub-themes:

• Transformation and Reclamation: Nature taking over forgotten spaces.
• Time and Memory: Layers of past, present, and future.
• Rituals and New Narratives: Reimagining industrial processes as symbolic acts.
• Feminisation and Reimagining Space: Reclaiming hyper-masculine environments through a feminist lens.

Poetry and Spoken Word

We are now open for applications from poets and spoken word artists who would like to be part of this year’s Hidden Door programme, running 11-15 June 2025 at The Paper Factory in Edinburgh.

Deadline: Sunday, 23 February 2025, 11:59pm