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:

1. Transformation and Reclamation: Nature Creeps In

Focus: The interplay between industrial decay and natural renewal.

• Highlights the emergence of plants, animals, and imagined creatures taking over forgotten places.
• Symbolises cycles of renewal, decay, and adaptation.

2. Time and Memory: Layers of Past, Present, and Future

Focus: The building as a living archive where time converges.

• Explores Stone Tape Theory, temporal overlaps, and narratives of human labour and speculative futures.
• Incorporates found objects as artefacts, creating an evolving archive.

3. Rituals and New Narratives

Focus: Reimagining industrial processes as symbolic or sacred acts.

• New myths and rituals emerge, transforming the industrial into something sacred, symbolic, or playful.
• Performances connect past industrial labour with new interpretations.

4. Feminisation and Reimagining the Space

Focus: Reclaiming traditionally masculine spaces through feminist perspectives.

• Highlights feminist reinterpretations of industrial history and systems.

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.