Past - old | Outer Spaces

Doors Open Days 2023

Doors Open Days is Scotland’s largest free festival and invites visitors to explore hundreds of fascinating buildings across the country.

In September 2023 our resident artists opened their doors, offering a rare opportunity to see what they do and how they have transformed empty commercial spaces into studios, performance spaces and creative community hubs.

ABERDEEN

Holborn House

Saturday 2 & Sunday 3 September
See how artist Emily Weaver’s new installation, combining large scale textile work and papier mache sculpture, has transformed office space at Holburn House. There will also be an opportunity to meet the artist and find out more about their work.

Image: Emily Weaver, Fish Folk, 2022

GLASGOW

Outer Spaces, Sauchiehall Street

'please pay for your shopping before taking it into the toilet’

Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 September

An exciting and unique opportunity to explore the former M&S building on Sauchiehall Street, which is currently occupied by 80+ Outer Spaces artists.
Visit open studios, exhibitions, and performances and find out how artists are utilising and reanimating empty buildings on the High Street.

Image credit: Beth Shapiro

PERTH

80-84 High Street

Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 September

Take part in a range of workshops to celebrate Perth Unesco City of Craft, where traditional crafts meet the new digital world. Workshops will be hosted by jewellery designer, Roberta Pederzoli (Quinta Essenza Jewellery) and creative computer programmer, Kerry Kidd (RaspiKidd).

EDINBURGH

57 Henderson Row

Saturday 23 September

An exciting and unique opportunity to take a behind the scenes peek inside the former Royal London building on Henderson Row, which is currently being occupied by over 50 multi-disciplinary artists.
This open studio event is an opportunity to see artists at work and find out how they utilise and reanimate empty buildings in the city of Edinburgh.

Exhibitions:
Outer Spaces is exploring the role art can have in the changes to public spaces by transforming disused shops into new exhibition spaces.
In partnership with Sculpture Placement Group (SPG), we are showing sculpture in some of Scotland's busiest high streets and shopping centres to engage new audiences. SPG is an artist-led action research organisation based in Glasgow and together we are bringing more work out of storage and into the heart of town centres and city neighbourhoods.
Information about the open call is here: https://www.sculptureplacementgroup.org.uk/sculpture-open-call/

Research:
With the support of Creative Informatics, Outer Spaces is working with Ben Schogler and his team at Playable Tech to develop the ‘Banter Bandit’ – an interactive screen based system which uses gaming technology to collect feedback from casual or accidental audiences on what they see or encounter at Outer Spaces sites. Creative Informatics is an ambitious research and development programme, which aims to bring the city’s world-class creative industries and tech sector together through a partnership of four organisations: the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, Codebase and Creative Edinburgh.
https://creativeinformatics.org/challenge/outer-spaces/