The venue, which is a former paper factory, will be used for Edinburgh’s Hidden Door festival

The Hidden Door festival will be transforming the former Saica factory site located next to the Edinburgh Gateway rail and tram stops.

A vast former paper factory is to become Edinburgh's next major festival venue.

The 15.5-acre site in the Maybury area is expected to host several events staged by the city's Hidden Door festival before it is transformed by more than 1,000 new homes.

The Hidden Door festival has secured its new new venue, The Paper Factory, until the end of 2025. Picture: Karen Patel | Karen Patel/Hidden Door

Towering buildings and warehouses will be transformed by live music, visual art and site-specific performances. The next two Hidden Door events are due to be staged in November and the spring at the new venue.

And the festival has secured permission from the new owners of the site, which Hidden Door has named The Paper Factory, to use the site until the end of 2025.

The venue has been lying empty for more than two years since Spanish paper and cardboard manufacturing firm Saica relocated to a new purpose-built facility in Livingston, in West Lothian.

The Hidden Door festival has secured its new new venue, The Paper Factory, until the end of 2025. Picture: Jim Coltham | Jim Coltham/Hidden Door

It was announced earlier this year the site, on Turnhouse Road, had been acquired by a housing developer Summix, which has reached an agreement with Hidden Door to allow it to run events, workshops and studios there.

Tickets for a two-day launch party, which will be held on November 22 and 23, are on sale now.

The Hidden Door festival has secured a former paper factory in Edinburgh for its next events. Picture: Dan Mosley | Dan Mosley

Hidden Door director Hazel Johnson, who took over the running of the festival last year, said: “Every new venue we take on presents unique opportunities and challenges, and this vast space is no different.

The Hidden Door festival has secured a former paper factory in Edinburgh for its next events. Picture: Chris Scott | Chris Scott

"We can’t wait to start work transforming the towering buildings, acres of warehouses and - in true Hidden Door style - all the nooks and crannies into one of our most ambitious arts venues yet.

“In addition to the festival, The Paper Factory will provide a base for Hidden Door to work with artists on site specific performance and art, commission new work and take huge steps towards our sustainability goals with workshops, studios and more."

Summix development director Stuart Black said: “We are proud to be part of Hidden Door’s story by making this unique space available to them and the creative community they have built.

“Our vision is for this to be one of the most exciting and best-connected development sites in Scotland. We’re really excited to see what Hidden Door’s artists can do with the space this autumn and throughout 2025.”

Hidden Door, which began life with small-scale events at the Roxy Art House, near the Festival Theatre in 2010, became a full-scale festival in 2014 when it took over a series of disused vaults on Market Street.

Subsequent events were Leith Theatre, a nearby empty cinema building, the former Royal High School on Calton Hill, a gap site and warehouse near Granton’s historic former gas tower and an empty Scottish Widows complex next to the Commonwealth Pool.

A weekend-long event staged earlier this year in part of a car park at the St James Quarter complex in the city centre.

Hidden Door has announced The Paper Factory as its next venue months after it struck a ten-year deal with the city council to hire on office space on Lauriston Place, which had been lying empty for three years.

At the time, Ms Johnson said the move would allow Hidden Door to create a new hub “from which to plan our activity and festivals will enable us work more closely with Edinburgh’s creative communities, all year round”.

Look inside the vast former paper factory becoming Edinburgh's new major festival venue

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