May 5, 2025
Join us on Wednesday 11 June as we throw open the doors to The Paper Factory for a very special Opening Night Party. Prepare yourself for the exuberant, the ethereal, the experimental and the downright eclectic. And expect to dance!
Here’s how your evening might look – although your exact path through the factory is entirely up to you..
Enter the building via the office reception block and get your wristband. You follow the sounds, emerging onto The Factory Floor, a huge industrial space filled with lights and visual art installations.
Head to the Jack Daniels stage to catch Roller Disco Death Party at 6:30pm. The two-piece electronic duo from Glasgow combine the songwriting expertise of Neal McHarg (synths) and the musical prowess of Amelia Boyle (drums). With live drums tied in with electronic sounds, expect sounds inspired by the likes of Soulwax, The Chemical Brothers and the big bass sounds of Justice.
You might also wander further into the building to discover the Crane Shed and our first dance performance of the festival. Cosmic Dance (Oxana Banshikova and Kirsten Newell) were selected to perform following a special Scratch Night co-curated by Dance Base. Cosmic Dance will present ‘Duality’, a contemporary Bharatanatyam duet that challenges traditional expectations of the dance form.
At 7pm it’s time to head to the our main stage in the Machine Room for Pearling. Inspired by the dreamlike, hypnotic chaos of dream pop and shoegaze artists, combined with her passion for experimental electronic music, Glasgow-based Pearling builds a magical world of feminine theatrics, bubbling with twinkly synths and sincere lyricism.
Alternatively, you might return to the The Factory Floor for our first Creative Collaboration. ‘Ghost in the Machine’ is a site-responsive performance blending physical theatre, dance, live drumming, visual art and costume, blurring the boundaries between ritual, history and the factory’s own mythology.
Now could be a good time to pop outside to the street food trucks to fuel up and maybe also grab a brew from the bar before things get really busy!
At 7:45pm, you have lots of choice. On the Jack Daniels Stage, the stonking saxophones and drums of Danish trio Smag På Dig Selv will get the party started, if it hasn’t already. Think jazz punks!
Meanwhile, over in the Locker Room our second Creative Collaboration begins. ‘Time and Memory’ is a narrative-driven installation exploring the lives of the factory’s former workers, weaving together real and imagined stories. This project includes film footage of the site, archival materials, and sculptural elements, bringing the past into dialogue with the present.
Also make time to head back to The Crane Shed for Mark Bleakley’s Dance Makes the Floor (7.45pm – 8.30pm) – a participatory project centred around the creation of a collectively made dance floor. Three performers work with an interactive sound design that only plays music when the dance floor is moving. The audience is invited to join the performers in fuelling the fire with their dance moves, as a webcam links the movement to the speed of the music – the performers jumping, swaying and shaking the dance floor into a sweaty hot blaze.
At 8pm soak up some spoken word in the Long Room with Aileen Lees and Zain Rishi presenting a mix of free-flowing narrative and poetic vignettes, intended to mimic the ritual of walking. Go a journey through place and time as reclamation, temporal layers and new narratives are explored through the interweaving of archival fragments about The Paper Factory.
Get yourself back to the Machine Room stage at 8.30pm for Edinburgh’s Bikini Body. If you like the danceable punk of ESG, Viagra Boys, Squid and Liquid Liquid and vocals inspired by the likes of the Slits, Bush Tetras and X Ray Spex, then Bikini Body is for you. “Dancier than Post-Punk and Punkier than dance” is the mantra of this Funk informed Post-Punk group.
At this point you’ve got a final chance to catch ‘Ghost in the Machine’ on The Factory Floor and grab another drink at the pop-up bar before heading to the Jack Daniels Stage for the brilliant Mermaid Chunky (9:15pm). This is a party, a collective dance, made all the better with more: people, ideas, layers, kick drums, recorders, saxophones, frogs.
Also at this time back in the Crane Shed you can witness our third Creative Collaboration, SPECTRAL. A soaring journey through the abandoned spaces, mysterious machines and secret corners of the Paper Factory, SPECTRAL presents an exhilarating visual, dance and aerial performance immersed in a fusion of light and lasers, with a live soundtrack embracing the cavernous reverb of the space, layering field recordings with intricate synths and polyrhythms.
If you can pull yourself from that spectacle, we’ve got more spoken word and poetry in the Long Room with Imogen Stirling in collaboration with Sonia Killman (9.30pm – 10pm). “The Boulders We Carry” is an immersive storytelling performance where poetry, narrative and electronic sound collide as themes of mythology and mental health meet. Based on the mythological King Sisyphus, reimagined in contemporary Glasgow, the piece is a commentary on a post-pandemic society coping with increased living costs and undergoing a collective mental health crisis that is not being treated with the severity or care it warrants.
As the sun sets on our venue, The Factory Floor continues to glow at our final Creative Collaboration, “Production Line of Dreams” lights up the vast industrial space in a newly commissioned performance. Psychedelic beat-poetry ensemble Acolyte bring together a collective of disparate art forms to recreate a production line, reflecting this year’s festival themes of ritual and new narratives. Inspired by The Paper Factory’s abandoned machinery, Production Line of Dreams uses loops, field recordings and movement to explore machine learning, imagination production and AI.
Meanwhile, at 10pm over in the Machine Room, London based post-punk band Snapped Ankles bring the forest to Hidden Door with their pulsating beats. Hypnotic rhythms are set against synthesised melodies, chants and abstract sound design to create Snapped Ankle’s ‘Forest Rayve’ sound.
As the live performances draw to a close, recharge your drinks and spend some time exploring the parts of the Factory that you missed earlier. With the work of over 30 visual artists installed throughout the complex, there’s probably more than you could discover in just one visit, so start planning your return trip – we’re open until Sunday 15 June!
Note: timings are subject to change, please double-check on the night as sometimes we need to shift things around a bit to fit everything in!
