Inaugural programme will showcase singers, musicians, artists and dancers

Edinburgh's Hidden Door festival will be using a former paper factory for its next events. Picture: Sam Jones | Sam Jones

Organisers of one of Edinburgh's arts venues have lifted the lid on their transformation of a vast paper factory which will play host to their next events.

Singers, musicians, dancers, drummers, painters, printmakers and sculptors will be showcased at the 15.5 acre site in west Edinburgh this weekend.

The Hidden Door festival will be staging two days of exhibitions, events and light shows this weekend ahead of a planned full-scale programme in the spring.

Edinburgh's Hidden Door festival will be using a former paper factory in the Maybury area for its next events. Picture: Chris Scott | Chris Scott/Hidden Door

The site, which will play host to Hidden Door on Friday night and all day on Saturday, sits beside the Maybury Junction, as well as the Edinburgh Gateway train and tram stops.

The site's warehouses, factory floors, offices and outhouses were previously home to the paper and cardboard manufacturer Saica, which relocated to a new plant in Livingston, West Lothian last year.

Hidden Door, started life with small-scale events at the Roxy Art House, in the city's south side in 2010, has since become renowned for taking on unused and neglected spaces for its events, including disused vaults on Market Street, a hidden courtyard on Kings' Stables Road, an old Scottish Widows office, Leith Theatre and the former State Cinema in Leith and the former Royal High School on Calton Hill.

Hidden Door has been given access to the former Saica plant until the end of 2025 under an agreement reached with the developers who snapped up the site earlier this year.

A proposed new "neighbourhood," dubbed Maybury Quarter, has been earmarked for the site by Summix Capital, whose project is planned to include 1000 homes, a new hotel with up to 150 rooms and new retail space, parks and gardens.

However the site has been renamed The Paper Factory while it is home to Hidden Door, which will be staging laser, light, drumming and dance shows to entertain the crowds between the live music performances this weekend.

Hot food and drink stalls, and pop-up bars will be brought in for the opening events, while festivalgoers will also buy original work from Hidden Door's art shop.

Director Hazel Johnson said the new venue - the biggest used by the festival to date - was able to be used for temporary workshop and studio space, as well as plan special commissions and performances.

She added: "Every new venue we take on presents unique opportunities and challenges, and this vast space is no different."

Music acts lined up over the weekend include electronic act Exterior, alt-pop singer Paige Kennedy, feminist punk Big Joanie, rock outfits indie rock outfit Trout, HotWax and Witch Fever, and pop duo Sarah/Shaun.

Visual artists being showcased include Jo Fleming Smith, Beth Shapeero, Fraser Taylor, James Epps, Aimee Finlay, Christian Sloan, Marly Merle and Justine Watt.

Hidden Door's visual art curator Jill Boualaxai said: "We’re exploring time, history, and archaeology, and the idea of nature creeping back into that industrial space.”

Stuart Black, development director at Summix Capital, 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."

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

Hidden Door festival reveals transformation of former Edinburgh paper factory ahead of two-day event

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