The Hidden Door

Grey skies are just a challenge to optimism - or so runs the quote. Whoever said that was probably unfamiliar with a Scottish January, where optimism is tested with a particular severity. Yet however steely those winter skies may be, cultural life in Edinburgh manages to continue beyond August with its usual brightness: this January ended in a particularly colourful flourish with the mini-arts festival The Hidden Door. Talked up as the "first of its kind in Scotland" by Creative Director David Martin, and featuring over 150 artists, musicians, poets and filmmakers, the festival aimed to provide "a multi-sensory snapshot" of the "incredible creativity in the arts across Edinburgh and Scotland."

'Multi-sensory' was exactly right, and the snapshot was a broad one. Split over three floors of the Roxy Art House – making full and imaginative use of the venue – each floor shared some combination of art, poetry, music or film. Sensory as well as physical disorientation seemed built into the experience: nowhere was this more literal than in the central room, where the walls of a constructed maze were used to display the works of the 50 visual artists involved. Upstairs, in a space only marginally less maze-like, further art installations were arranged alongside a space for performance poetry; downstairs was devoted more directly to live music, short films and individual poetry readings.

The quality of the individual work varied as considerably as the content – quality ranging from the cheerfully amateur to the more professional, with interest and content following a similar trajectory - but more important was the overall effect of the merging of the art forms. It did not matter so much that the works of art in the ‘maze’ were difficult to view, or their arrangement chaotic, nor that poetry readings were often interrupted by music drifting in from one of the many stages: more interesting and affecting than any individual piece was the combined energy and enthusiasm of the festival itself. As an experiment in combining creativity, The Hidden Door was a successful one, and an optimistic reminder that, even in dark winter months, the arts in Edinburgh are anything but grey.