Turning an empty paper mill into the city's hottest festival venue

Plus: The Capital's newest music fest focuses on homegrown talent

Artist James Epps works on his installation: Pic by James Duncan for Hidden Door

On the far Western edge of Edinburgh, tucked into a corner between Edinburgh Gateway Station and the suburban streets of West Craigs, lies a huddle of cavernous, quiet buildings.

The former day-to-day life of the closed-down Saica paper factory is still eerily evident - noticeboards still display instructions, machinery lies untouched, locker rooms are still stocked with steel-capped boots and family photos. Only the thick layer of dust betrays the two years since anyone has worked here. 

Empty, that is, until two weeks ago, when hoards of artists, builders, musicians, architects, sound engineers and many, many volunteers moved in to turn the abandoned factory space into a hive of every kind of creative art. Hidden Door’s newest venue is its biggest project yet; with multiple buildings and 15.5 acres of space, this weekend a venue launch will showcase a fraction of the space, before the full festival next summer. I went down on Monday to get a quick preview of what the newest Hidden Door venue will offer to artists and festival-goers. 

Mysterious spaces

Hidden Door began as an artists’ collective in 2010, organising exhibitions in the Roxy Art House to offer artists an opportunity to display their work outwith a standard “white cube” gallery space. When their go-to venue was closed, the group decided to try to gain access to one of Edinburgh’s many unused spaces. 

It wasn't easy, but with the final sign-off on the venue just two weeks before the festival itself, Hidden Door hosted its first festival as we know it in Market Street Vaults in 2014. This began a series of artistic takeovers of some of Edinburgh’s most mysterious spaces, from Leith Theatre to the old Royal High School to the former Scottish Widows offices. “What we realised really quickly was the Edinburgh has some amazing and untapped underused spaces, and we just thought well if we open these up not only will we have people coming to see the music or the visual art they might come just to see the building,” says Hazel Johnson, conservation architect and Director of Hidden Door.