After the success of Hidden Door 2014 at the then-disused Market Street Vaults in Edinburgh, in 2015 Hidden Door moved to a new location in the buildings and courtyard of the disused street lighting depot on Kings Stables Road off the Grassmarket.

Full of intrigue and memories of bygone industry, the depot straddled a central courtyard and was over several floors; from the pink and blue corridors, caged rooms and arched spaces to the neck-craning 90 degree view of Edinburgh Castle as you left the building. 

The festival provided a programme of over 100 artists from across the cultural spectrum, with live music, exhibition spaces, and a performance art programme curated by the Royal Scottish Academy. 

One of the many notable names on the long list of exhibitors was Toby Paterson, whose ‘Allocations’ – a triptych of framed card shapes in relief, placed on the wall within angular brass pipes positioned in between – sat alongside the vivid and much-selfied ‘Loveletters’ by Juliana Capes, a squadron of pastel paper aeroplanes suspended in flight. 

Nearby was Donald Watson’s ‘Traverse Green 3’, a ceiling-mounted arc of vivid green vinyl strips fluttering in the breeze above the bar area, while Jill Martin Boualaxai’s ‘The Space in Between’ transformed an old pump room with diagrammatic decoupage and darkened visual projections. 

Even crumbling offices had been commandeered as art venues.  Wandering the exhibits was fun and often interactive. A visual trick involving a false doorway in a darkened room with strip lights pointing inwards from the frame, Charlotte Kiernan’s ‘Between Spaces’ baffled the senses with its mirror-crossing effect.

Meanwhile, Paula Petroll and Rhona Taylor both chose to strikingly decorate the walls, floor and ceilings of their rooms, the former with decoupage and intensely detailed ink drawings, the latter with bold swathes of colour.

There was a strong emphasis on theatre in 2015, with the best spot being the “Peely Room” – a dusty old industrial chamber where the paint hangs in ribbons from the ceiling. A version of Macbeth was told entirely in silence by the Ludens Ensemble, and Siege Perilous took on Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, a tale of destitute Russians living in a flophouse on the Volga.

Spoken word performer Annie Lord explored the history of the site, and the resonances of history upon a place in her mesmerising short monologue ‘Hooves’, and Darkland Collective’s ‘The End and the Beginning” was an equally hypnotic dance performance in shadowplay on a video screen, backed by live violin and electronics.

In addition there was the music programme with input from some of the city’s most well-regarded promoters.  Song, By Toad welcomed electro-rock trio Numbers Are Futile and Adam Stafford playing an eclectic set while scaling the walls of the “Cage Room” (literally a room with a cage in it), while Tinderbox Orchestra hammered through funk-driven street symphonies on Alternative Orchestra Night. 

2015 also saw the use of a secondary site at the Bongo Club, and the extensive music programme was performed across both sites. And as if all that content wasn’t enough, the 5th Edinburgh Short Film Festival curated a full programme for Hidden Door 2015. 

Obviously we’ve only mentioned a fraction of the programme here – if you have memories you’d like to share with us, jump over to our socials.

To find out what happened next, stay tuned for our 2016 retrospective coming soon…

Images: Chris Scott. Words by Julia.