Dept Q studio to become Edinburgh Festival pop-up venue

The Herald Scotland

30-06-2025

Lewis Walker's show - which will explore 'the human search for authenticity in a world based on repetition' – will close the Edinburgh Art Festival programme this August.
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Other art festival art festival will be staged at the Royal Botanic Garden, the sculpture garden attraction Jupiter Artland, St Giles' Cathedral and The Grange cricket club.
Walker's hour-long performance at the Leith warehouse complex will offer a rare public opportunity to see inside the warehouse complex which has been used by screen industry giants Amaxon, Sony and Netflix for major productions since the official launch of the studios five years ago.
Part of the FirstStage Studios complex in Leith will be opened for this year's Edinburgh Art Festival. (Image: Supplied)
Previous productions include two seasons of supernatural thriller The Rig, which were set in the and the Arctic Circle, the feature film The Outrun, for scenes set in London's nightclub scene and the time travel fantasy saga Outlander, for a final series set during the American Revolution.
Most recently, FirstStage was used for extensive filming on the Dept Q, the Edinburgh-set crime thriller, which has been a global ratings winner for Netflix.
The studios complex was the base for the production for most of last year and was used the filming of key scenes, including those set inside a fictional Edinburgh police headquarters.
Walker's show has been jointly commissioned by the art festival and the Serpentine Galleries in London, will be staged in the former industrial building in Leith months after it was performed in a 19th century chapel in London.
The art festival's programme states: 'Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness, born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves.
The gymnastics and dance performance sees a body built, piece by piece: a character assembled through learned movements, imposed behaviors, and artificial layers.
'Through conditioning, we create a machine. Through unlearning, we return to the animal. The cycle continues, revealing that there is no final, fixed truth, only endless adaptation. Bornsick suggests that humanhood is a paradox; we search for something real, yet everything we are is borrowed.'
Art festival curator Eleanor Edmondson said: 'Lewis Walker will close the festival with Bornsick, transforming the cavernous warehouse space of FirstStage Studios in Leith into a site of emotion and collective resonance.
'Rather than offering a fixed narrative, Walker channels what feels urgent and relevant in through movement — allowing meaning to unfold through the audience's own experience. Their practice is grounded in deep care, holding collaborators and participants with attentiveness and generosity.'
Walker said: 'Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves.
'The gymnastics and dance performance explores identity as a compulsive act of referencing, an endless cycle of borrowing and reshaping of what came before.'