Hidden Door will be taking over a huge empty Edinburgh building for a five-day music, arts and entertainment festival.
Having recently transformed the former Royal High School building on Regent Terrace for a similar event, the disused Scottish Widows building on Dalkeith Road will now be given a new lease a life.
While the unique property is at the centre of plans to turn it into a residential site, Hidden Door are inviting an audience to witness its transformation between May 31 and June 4, 2023.
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The building sticks out with a series of hexagonal shapes and the iconic ponds that surround it, which have now been drained. Since it opened in 1976, it has hosted financial institutions, with Lloyds Banking Group moving out of the site in 2020.
A series of ambitious collaborative projects produced by Hidden Door will see artists and performers from different disciplines working together to transform the vast interior. Audiences will be invited to journey deep into the building to seek out the performances and explore the artworks.
The full programme will be announced early next year, with a call for visual artists, dancers, musicians and spoken word performers to get involved.
David Martin, Creative Director of Hidden Door, said: "This is the sort of building I’ve always dreamed about taking over for Hidden Door. It has a sort of ‘Tardis’ quality - although it does look pretty big from the outside, nothing quite prepares you for the expanse of spaces on the inside - you really could get lost in there!
"Every time we consider an empty building in Edinburgh we ask ourselves what we could do with it, and this one presents us with the opportunity to do something quite different.
"We will commission a series of projects that will see artists working with musicians, dancers, set designers, lighting artists and sound designers, all creating a series of experiential theatrical environments throughout the building for our audience to discover. We really are aiming for high impact next year!"
Hidden Door recently gave the former Royal High School building a roof terrace with a bar over-looking Arthur's Seat, so fans should be excited to see with what they come up with this time.
A limited release of Early Bird Tickets are now available via hiddendoorarts.org/tickets or from Citizen Ticket. Once the full programme is announced, ticket holders will be able to select which days they would like to attend.
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