"When I was your age, I worked in a corrugated cardboard factory!" is a phrase my father was fond of telling me as a teenager, presumably in an attempt to extol the virtues of a good Presbyterian work ethic.
I wonder what he’d have made of his first place of employment as it was this weekend; all 15.5 acres of it covered with bright graffiti and transformed into performance space, dance floors and installations, complete with fully stocked bars and an array of food trucks. "The Paper Factory", as Edinburgh’s Hidden Door Festival have named it, is a former industrial site on the west of the city which until 2023 housed the Saica paper and cardboard manufacturing plant before their move to a new site in a nearby town. It’s made up of factory floors, warehouses, outhouses and offices, using much of the original materials and machinery as part of its artistic offering. In fact, it was often difficult to tell where the site's industrial heritage ended and the art began, so seamless were some of the projects and performances on show.
One such collaboration was "We have all been here – now into the light", an interdisciplinary installation featuring visual art, music and sound art, found objects and oral histories. Taking place in the factory’s former locker room, it featured new music composed by Stephanie Lampera and Tom W Green interspersed with recordings from two former workers who were employed in the factory.
The festival’s musical offerings were as eclectic as ever. Smag På Dig Selv (pictured right) – a Danish trio hailing from Christiana, an alternative enclave in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen – brought an infectious mash-up of ska, jazz, metal and grunge with two duelling saxophonists underpinned by driven drumming. Post-punk outfit Bikini Body played with an upbeat, slightly dirty zest, with lead vocalist Vicky Kavanagh’s performance both commanding and fun. At the more ethereal end of the spectrum, Edinburgh based psychedelic music and beat poetry group Acolyte gave a dreamy performance on the factory floor, with the band dressed in 80s style oversized suits reminiscent of a somewhat ghostlike Talking Heads. Harpist, singer and composer Esther Swift (pictured below) performed with her signature blend of folk, jazz and classical, and Slow Karma brought jazz-tinged grooves to the closing night in the Paper Factory’s Machine Room.
One of the standout performances from the festival was SPECTRAL (main image), an aerial dance piece choreographed by Tess Letham, with lighting design from Sam Jones and a powerful soundscape from sound artist The Reverse Engineer. Performed by Scottish aerial dance company All or Nothing, this piece powerfully captures the essence of the workers who occupied the factory space over the years, beginning with floor-based dance then a series of spectacular aerial choreography which seamlessly merges with the laser effects of the lighting, giving an otherworldly sense.
This was quite possible the most site-specific Hidden Door festival yet. Though the spaces which they occupy – abandoned or soon to be demolished places in various often overlooked corners of the city – always form a key part of the festival’s identity, this may be the first one where the stories, ethos and heritage of the site has been so specifically and pertinently woven in to the art. The plan for the Paper Factory is demolition, with its site to see around 1000 new homes built in the next few years. Will their inhabitants know or care about the site’s heritage? Who knows? But how wonderful for the working lives, long careers, short summer stints, commutes, relationships and friendships borne out of this former factory to have been given such a fitting, fun and fascinating requiem.
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