You must be recommended from a regional festival to be able to compete at the Provincial Festival. Please check the Member Festival section of this website for a regional festival in your area, including links to their websites, contact information and important dates for each festival. Each festival will have its own requirements for choosing provincial candidates at the local level. Please check local syllabi carefully for these. As well, please check our Syllabus for the requirements at the Provincial level. Eventually, we hope to be able to list music teachers around BC as well.
Any BC Performing Arts Festival may apply for membership in PABC once they are able to prove that they are able to run a successful festival over a period of time, usually a minimum of two years. It is expected that festivals will be open primarily to youth in music, dance and speech arts disciplines and will be open to anyone who wishes to participate, although a festival may be geographically defined. Membership in PABC allows festival to recommend participants to the Provincial Festival and starting in 2022, for recommendation to the Canada West Performing Arts Festival as well. Additionally, membership includes participation in twice yearly membership meetings during which ideas are exchanged between festivals around the province, as well as access to various PABC publications. Annual Membership is currently $100 and there are annually assessed affiliation fees. Please contact the office for further information regarding PABC membership.
Affiliation fees are calculated based on the total number of entries in your local/regional festival. Affiliation fees are $1.10 per dance and speech entry and $2.00 per music entry. Of this $2.00 per music entry, $0.90 is kept for awards at the Provincial Excellence level of competition. Fees are set at the Annual General Meeting.
Membership dues are $100 per local/regional festival per year. There is a $100 initiation fee to join PABC and should a festival be in arrears with this annual membership fee, there is an additional $100 fee charged for reinstatement.
All festivals may send one competitor per category (for example, Classical Vocal) per age group (Junior, Intermediate etc.). However single discipline dance and speech arts festivals may send 2 competitors for each category and age level. Music is no longer considered a single discipline. For the past few years, certain music festivals have been allowed to send more than one competitor in each level of a discipline, based on the number of entries in a specific discipline at their local festival. These festivals will be notified of the disciplines for which they are eligible to send multiple competitors, in the Fall of the year preceding the Festival.
A local/regional festival may send any number of merited participants for each class. Since 2017 there has been a special program for Merited Participants which includes performances and workshops. The Provincial Festival is a valuable motivation and inspiration for students of the performing arts, and attendance at performance classes and workshops is a valuable experience for those students who show promise for future years.