Hidden Door announces 2025 programme
Bikini Body, No Windows, Mermaid Chunky and Snapped Ankles are among the acts heading to Hidden Door 2025, which will take place in an old paper factory in west Edinburgh
Last September, Hidden Door announced that they had found a huge site for their 2025 edition: The Paper Factory, a 15.5-acre site occupied by the former Saica paper and cardboard manufacturing facility in Maybury, on the western edge of Edinburgh. Today, they reveal the bands and artists who’ll be performing and exhibiting in The Paper Factory’s vast complex of warehouses, factory floors, offices and outbuildings across the five-day festival, which runs 11 to 15 June.
Music: Snapped Ankles, Alice Faye, Katy J Pearson and more
The festival will kick off in energetic style on Wed 11 Jun with Edinburgh dance-punk outfit Bikini Body, London-based post-punkers Snapped Ankles and the gloriously weird Gloucestershire duo Mermaid Chunky. There’s a punk/pop flavour to the following night too, with Manchester four-piece Witch Fever, Irish garage punk band Spirits and the punk-inflected pop-anthems of Glasgow’s SISTER MADDS lined up for Thursday.
On Friday night, Glasgow singer-songwriter Alice Faye performs, as do community mega-band Tinderbox Orchestra and uber-talented composer Erland Cooper, while Saturday’s lineup features a tantalising alternative indie trio of No Windows, The Orielles and Katy J Pearson.
The festival’s music offering comes to a close on Sun 15 Jun with performances from Moor Mother alongside Bee Asha, MC Yallah & Debmaster and the eclectic jazz-infused energy of the Ishmael Ensemble.
Visual arts: Over 30 artists confirmed
This music lineup is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s on offer from Hidden Door's multi-arts celebration. Over 30 artists have been confirmed as part of the visual art programme, including Adam Hogarth, April Lannigan, Claire Marion Black, David Lemm, Dorsey Kaufmann, Ewan Douglas, Felicity Saravia White, Gosia Walton, Iona Peterson, Izzy Osborn, Jackie Bell, Jo McDonald, Juliana Capes, Laura McGlinchey, Lucas Chih-Peng Kao, Lucy Mulholland, Molly Wickett, Muireann Nic an Bheatha, Olivier Jacques Julien, Paul Meikle, Sam Sharma, Silas T Parry, Sue Sim, Tom Fairlamb, Valerie Reid, Vicky Higginson and Waad AlBawardi.
Hidden Door says these artists will be able to respond to The Paper Factory's unique setting, and audiences will get a chance to explore and discover every nook and cranny of this reclaimed building.
Spoken word, dance and film
Each night of the festival will also have a spoken word element, with poets and performers including the award-winning Theresa Muñoz, Glasgow poet Charles Lang and post-punk-music-spoken-word-comedy duo FEVER PEACH all confirmed.
In terms of dance, Hidden Door will feature Yuxi Jiang’s The Circle Unbound, an immersive dance theatre piece inspired by Tibetan Buddhist circular culture, and Mark Bleakley’s Dance Makes The Floor, which we’re told centres around the creation of a collectively made dance floor, conjuring up past dance floors, both loved and lost. ELELEI, Jessie Roberts-Smith, Katie Armstrong and Dorine Mugisha are some of the other names already announced for the dance programme.
The festival also includes moving image work by Abby Warlow and Lewis Gourlay that will be projected across The Pipe Factory’s vast walls, and four newly commissioned interdisciplinary collaborations.
Appropriately for a festival that takes over and transforms abandoned urban buildings, this year’s Hidden Door programme has been built around the theme of ‘Building as a Myth’, and we’re told that “every rusted pipe, defunct machine and weathered surface” of The Pipe Factory is part of this artistic reclamation. We’re certainly looking forward to having a good nosey around the site this summer.
Hidden Door takes place at The Paper Factory, Maybury, Edinburgh, 11-15 Jun, hiddendoorarts.org