David Martin
is sitting outside Leith Theatre to talk about the programme of this year’s
Hidden Door, the grassroots festival he co-founded, and which will take up
residence for a third time in the theatre they helped revitalise after it lay
empty and unused for thirty years. Over the road is the site of the State
Cinema, a similarly unused space, which Hidden Door expanded operations into
last year prior to it becoming a building site where new residential properties
will soon be built. As a metaphor for how things tend to go in Edinburgh, the
image speaks for itself.
“It’s
quite poignant,” says Martin, watching the scene of demolition on a break from
his job teaching at Leith School of Art.
While
this was always going to be the way with the State, its loss means that the
expansive programme of theatre and dance that featured in both venues in 2018 alongside
the audience-catching array of main-stage gigs can’t happen again. A financial
short-fall following last year’s festival also necessitated a fundraising drive
to enable this year’s events to happen at all.
As a
result, after the ten-day extravaganzas of yore, Hidden Door is a smaller
affair this year, confining itself to a four-night long weekend that focuses
largely on gigs. A large visual art programme housed in the building’s assorted
nooks and crannies will also happen as before. If this is Hidden Door getting
back to its roots, for Martin and his small army of dedicated volunteers, it’s
no less labour intensive.
“We
initially thought we’d like to do a small-scale event to consolidate things,”
says Martin, “and I suppose it looks like a little bit of a step back in a way
while we get back on top of things. What we’ve discovered is that while a
four-day event might look smaller, it’s still a big deal to put on, and what
we’ve got is pretty fantastic.”
This is
evident from a line-up which on the first-night features a female-led bill of
R&B star Ray BLK, off-kilter pop duo Let’s Eat Grandma and Dunbar’s own rap
trio The Honey Farm, as well as Edinburgh electronic duo Chuchoter and Glasgow
DJ Sarra Wild. Friday will feature a nine-hour night of electronica led by
Ninja Tune record label star Nathan Fake, local duo Maranta and Manchester’s
Kelly Lee Owens.
A Saturday
night part-based show features Anglo/Spanish trio Crystal Fighters and
electronic quartet Low Island, while Sunday night will close with a more
band-based affair led by Glasgow quintet Acrylic, Cigarettes After Sex, Dundee
two-piece St Martiins and New York-based Miss Grit.
“We
wanted each night to have a different identity,” says Martin, “and while we
still want to be experimental, and attract new audiences, we also want people
to be able to sing along.”
Hidden
Door first started as a micro-festival at what is now Assembly Roxy back in
2010. After taking time out, the festival relocated to the now demolished
former home to City of Edinburgh Council’s lighting depot. Over Hidden Door’s
two annual residencies there, the enclosed courtyard and occupation of
dilapidated buildings on all sides lent the event the air of a temporary
counter-cultural village a long way from the current hotel development which
took its place.
It was
Hidden Door’s move into Leith Theatre for the first time three years ago that
captured the public imagination, and, galvanised by a long-standing local
campaign to re-open the space, helped put the venue back on the map. Since
then, Edinburgh International Festival have utilised the theatre for their own
contemporary music programme, while other events, including the epic stage
production of The Last Days of Mankind, have taken place there. If all this
other activity has slightly stolen Hidden Door’s thunder, Martin remains both
pragmatic and philosophical enough to recognise that’s how things go.
“When
EIF said they wanted to go down to Leith Theatre we were dead chuffed,” he
says, “but it means we have to work harder for what we want to do. EIF’s great
for putting on more established acts, but our programme is more about featuring
what’s innovative, and is more about what’s going on now. One of our
challenges, and it’s the same for EIF, is getting an Edinburgh crowd to come
along to something they might not have heard before. There isn’t that culture
in Edinburgh. A lot of the time people would rather save up for something they
know rather than take a chance.”
Despite
this, Martin is unbowed in terms of Hidden Door having a future.
“It’s
pretty exciting for us just now,” he says. “It feels like a really good moment
in our development. We’ve plans to take Hidden Door to other places, and maybe
take artists abroad and bring artists from elsewhere here. One of the main
things about Hidden Door is to keep our international connections going no
matter what.”
As the
last year has proved, none of this is going to be easy to realise.
“Festivals
are really struggling at the moment,’ says Martin, “and the business model we
use is very high risk, so if you don’t get something right it’s really
difficult to keep things going. Part of our task over the next year is to try
and work out how we can fund everything we do, but I think the important thing for
Hidden Door is to keep the spirit right, and make sure we’re not caught up in
too much bureaucracy. Ultimately we’re about trying to create space for people
to be able to innovate, and to be able to take the risks they want to take.”
Hidden
Door runs at Leith Theatre, Edinburgh, May 30-June 2. Full details can be found
at www.hiddendoorblog.org
The Herald, May25th 2019
ends
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