Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing  in Peru

What is Pacific Contact? Well according to the website it’s all of this –

Now in its 34th year, Pacific Contact is the BC Touring Council’s annual west coast trade show and booking conference for the performing arts. It includes showcases, a contact room (trade show booths of artists and industry) workshops and networking opportunities for artists and performing arts presenters.

Basically a bunch of talent buyers from the across BC and parts beyond come to check out possible talent for their performance arts season. I’ve heard it referred (just recently in fact) as the PAC circuit – Performing Arts Centers. PAC buyers aren’t the only one’s who attend this conference, but they certainly make up a large component of the buyers who do attend.

I’ve known about Pacific Contact for year, almost since the time I arrived in Vancouver back in 1990, but have never done much more than attend the show as a guest to see what it’s all about. Why? Well it comes down to this. If you get a showcase, the chance to perform in front of the delegates who attend the shows, then you have an excellent chance of booking a very lucrative tour. If you don’t showcase, the chances of landing a tour are radically reduced.

The one year I applied back in the 90’s, my materials showed me in a Street and Festival environment which isn’t exactly the market that Pacific Contact caters to and I wasn’t awarded a spot in the showcase. With out the showcase I didn’t feel that it was worth the investment of time and money to try and land a tour, and had lots of other pots on various stoves at the time that were keeping me busy anyway.

These days, with all of the Cruise Ship work I’ve been doing crafting an application that made me look more in keeping with the venue would be a lot easier, but it’s one of those things in the pile of good intentions that is sitting on my desk that I simply haven’t gotten to yet.

Is Pacific Contact a great way to book a tour? Provided you get a showcase and wow the crowd, then yes you can do very well from it. If you don’t get the showcase however it’s a bit of a craps shoot. Don’t go into it if you don’t have that showcase slot expecting great things. You may still land a few gigs, and certainly the opportunity to network is there, but the bulk of the bookings seem to go to those who do perform in the showcase time slots and deliver a great performance.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Job Opportunities, Performance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.