Devon Performing Arts Festival

The Devon Performing Arts Festival is a long-standing competitive event of music, speech and drama, held at South Street Baptist Church in Exeter city centre. It is a platform for performance by young people and adults in front of professional adjudicators.

Over 1,500 performers, with their families and friends, will converge in Exeter’s South Street Baptist Church in March 2012 to perform in the Devon Performing Arts Festival, now in its 85th year. Over a 3-week period there will be more than 750 performances.

Virtually every musical instrument, played solo and in groups and orchestras, is represented at the Festival, as well as solo singers, choirs and performers in Speech and Drama, with readings of prose and poetry by different age groups. Amateur performers of all ages and abilities are encouraged to enter and experience the thrill of playing, singing, and performing in public.

Specialised adjudicators, high-level performers and experts in their own fields, assess each performance and offer carefully considered comment and advice to the artists. The very best performances are selected to take part in a Gala Concert on the last day of the Festival.

Music teachers and schools from all over Devon support the Festival by encouraging their pupils to take part as soloists or in groups, choirs and orchestras, and to take part in Speech and Drama performances.

Musical and choral societies from Devon are also represented , and private entrants enter in large numbers. For many, the Festival is their only opportunity to show off in public with a friendly, appreciative, and if necessary sympathetic audience.

Performance levels range from beginner to virtuoso, using instruments including keyboard instruments, brass, strings, woodwinds, guitars and handbells. Recent festivals have seen a growth in musicians playing the harp, with the 2011 Gala Concert including pieces played by a group of 12 harpists whom the Festival had brought together for the first time.

The Festival’s website www.dpaf.org.uk has full details, including complete lists of the Instrumental and Keyboard classes, and classes in Singing, and Speech and Drama. The Festival runs from 5th March to the Gala Concert at 6.30pm on 24th March, which invariably contains performances by world-class performers.

New performers are welcome; it is very simple to enter for any class on-line from the DPAF website, or by contacting the organisers at admin@devonpaf.org.uk or by regular mail to
DPAF, 37 Pinwood Meadow Drive, Exeter EX4 9LA, or by phone to 0845 838 2314.

Members of the public are welcome to come and support the artists during the performing rounds, and of course to see everyone take part in the Gala night.

Full programme:

SPEECH & DRAMA: Monday 5th March - Friday 9th March
STRINGED INSTRUMENTS: Monday 12th March - Tuesday 13th March
SINGING: Wednesday 14th March - Saturday 17th March (Adult Choirs: Saturday 17th March)
WIND & BRASS INSTRUMENTS, ORCHESTRAS: Monday 19th March - Tuesday 20th March
KEYBOARD: Wednesday 21st March - Thursday 22nd March
GALA CONCERT: Sat 24th March, 6.30pm

Advance booking for spectators not necessary.