The Community Resource for All Things Poetry
Hidden Door is an annual festival of music, art, theatre, film, dance and spoken word in Edinburgh. The festival is held in forgotten urban spaces across the city. In 2025, it will take place from 11 to 15 June.
We are now open for applications from poets and spoken word artists who would like to be part of this year’s Hidden Door programme.
Hidden Door Festival’s 2025 Theme is The Building as a Myth. In poetry, this relates to ideas of both physical and narrative construction. What does it mean for spoken word artists to occupy an abandoned room and tell new stories? What stories do we choose to tell and why? And how do our individual performances collect into one greater whole?
We would like you to consider this year’s overarching theme within the four following sub-themes:
Focus: The interplay between industrial decay and natural renewal.
Focus: The building as a living archive where time converges.
Focus: Reimagining industrial processes as symbolic or sacred acts.
Focus: Reclaiming traditionally masculine spaces through feminist perspectives.
When you apply, please identify one or two of these sub-themes you feel that you work and/or set relates to.
Performers are paid a flat fee of £200.