Just to explain the program this year ….  we were expecting a larger eisteddfod than last year, but we didn’t expect the Dance program to increase from 2 (full) days last year to 7 (full) days this year.  We also had to find a new venue for the Instrumental and Popular Vocal sections (because we were exceeding the capacity of the room at the Central Coast Conservatorium) and the Dance sections (because Wyong High School was not available for hire this year).

Our philosophy is to book a venue for longer than we need and then it’s easier to plan and organise the program in the best possible way.  This allows every competitor the time to compete rather than closing entries early because we’ve run out of time at the venue.  For example, it meant that this year we booked the Instrumental venue for 4 days, Popular Vocal for 3 days, Dance for 9 days (including Speech & Drama), etc…

Then we publish the syllabus and wait for the registrations.  After 5 weeks,  registrations close and then we can figure out how long we really need the venue for (obviously less days than what we reserved).  That plan always works – except for this year.  This year we received a massive number of Dance registrations – far exceeding our estimate of 3-4 days, and suddenly very hard to fit in the days that we’d actually reserved the venue for.  We have a guide that “all sections for the same age group are on the same day”, but we had 2 full days of 12yrs and under, and a full day of almost every other age group.  In the end we got the program done, but unfortunately some competitors will have to perform on a few different days.

Because this year the venues are public schools, we can’t expand outside the bounds of the school holidays and most of the competitors are school-aged children so probably won’t attend on a normal school day either.

This leaves us with a program that looks like this:

Sept 24 – Instrumental – Wadalba Community School
Sept 25 –  Instrumental – Wadalba Community School
Sept 27 –  Popular Vocal – Wadalba Community School
Sept 28 –  Popular Vocal – Wadalba Community School
Oct 1 –  Speech & Drama – Terrigal High School
Oct 2 –  Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 3 –  Classical Vocal – Central Coast Conservatorium
Oct 4 –  Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 5 –  Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 6 –  Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 7 –  Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 8 – Dance – Terrigal High School
Oct 9 – Dance – Terrigal High School

We hope that everyone understands that we try to do our best and be fair to all competitors.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.