Festival director urges public to 'vote with their feet' amid last minute trend putting arts events at risk

A festival director has urged people to “vote with their feet” and attend arts events, amid a reluctance to commit to buying tickets in advance which she says is putting events at risk.

Hazel Johnson, director of Hidden Door, which is running this week in a disused paper factory on the outskirts of Edinburgh, said a trend for buying tickets last minute left the future of arts events at risk due to uncertainty of viability.

She appealed to the public to make an “investment in Edinburgh's creative future” amid “unprecedented challenges”.

Ms Johnson - whose event rotates around different spaces each year, usually in buildings temporarily disused or awaiting redevelopment - told The Scotsman advance ticket sales for the event had not been as high as organisers had hoped, despite a high level of enthusiasm about the festival, amid a growing trend to buy last minute.

She warned people should not be complacent in assuming that events “will happen if they don’t engage”.

She said: “Our main income comes from people actually buying a ticket and voting with their feet. We can’t ever be guaranteed that - and this isn’t exclusive to Hidden Door, but across arts events, people are not buying in advance, they’re waiting to the last minute to buy tickets for things, which creates that additional risk. There’s always an inherent risk, but the trend seems to be in people waiting a lot longer before they commit.

“From the conversations and the general vibe, it doesn’t feel any different to how it always used to feel, in that there’s a really big buzz around it, so we may get loads of folk rocking up, but even so, it’s not a given that we’ll reach the numbers we provisionally hoped we might.”

She added: “It does rely on people actively participating in the arts and not just assuming it will happen if they don’t engage.”

She said a spike in sales in the first event post-pandemic had been replaced by slower advance sales.

Hidden Door first launched in 2009.

She said: “We’ve seen slightly different ticketing patterns post pandemic and that does seem to be the general consensus.”

“Since then, the trend has been a reluctance to commit, getting a bit comfortable in not going out, people are feeling the pinch financially. It’s a combination of factors, but I want to galvanise people into action. We’d love to continue doing what we’re doing but with the risk to the very last minute, it’s going to become harder and harder if the trends continue.”

Tinderbox Orchestra l-r Callum Stevenson, Claire Docherty, Rosie Irvine and Leo Bacica during a photocall to promote the Hidden Door Festival | PA

She warned that without strong ticket sales, which she described as an "investment in Edinburgh's creative future", festivals like Hidden Door "simply can’t exist".

She said: “We don’t want our ambition to be completely curtailed by the risk becoming too great, that is we tried to do something remarkable and different, there won’t be an audience there to see it.”

Love the arts? Us too - subscribe now to our dedicated newsletter

The festival, which is run by volunteers, this year received money from the Creative Scotland Development Fund, allowing it to increase its accessibility through concessions and free tickets, including a “pay what you can” option.

The festival, which will offer five days of live music, visual art, immersive pop-up performances and special events at The Paper Factory – an industrial site in west Edinburgh – runs until Sunday.