A/PPS began in 2019 with a day-long slow concert of ambient and experimental electronic music at the Yellowhouse Art Centre. In 2020 we pivoted to an online festival during the pandemic, and from that learned the value and accessibility of a hybrid festival with in-person, livestream and online broadcasts. Our season now includes the summer festival, Active/Passive, as well as BioSonic!, a spring event series, and additional concerts throughout the fall and winter.

We love to collaborate on productions, performances and media featuring ambient and experimental electronic musicians that grow audiences for the arts in our local community. Working in a rural and remote location, accessible only via ferry, we are one of very few organizations bringing music performances to our island. Our focus on these unique genres ensures that our local community has the opportunity to explore new-to-them artists, music, and performance styles.

We partner with LEÑA Artist Research Centre and Residency to offer our artists weeklong residencies to explore their practice. We also work with Yellowhouse Art Centre to connect our artists with their programming with youth and artists working in other media.

Our mandate is to:

• bring creative, experimental, singular and exceptional music to the Southern Gulf Islands via performances, installations, broadcasts, workshops, residencies and more;
• build an audience and community for new and exciting creative endeavours, including music, media and technology; and
• amplify and support diverse artist voices from throughout the Pacific Northwest.

A/PPS brings together emerging and established artists, and connects performers working in disparate genres and communities. This builds connections and provides a nurturing performance space that supports artists as they explore and experiment. As producers and promoters, we strive to present diverse artist voices, especially to connect arts performance with space and place in the unceded, ancestral and stolen territories of the Penelakut, Lamalcha, Hwitslum and other Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples as well as the ceded territories of Tsawwassen First Nation.

Our values are derived from our mandate, and direct all of our work and the way we relate with artists, audiences, participants and communities.

Our values are to:

• Be artist-centered by paying living wages, decolonizing their engagement and offering supports to develop their practice
• Be accessible by providing accommodations and being flexible, keeping ticket costs low, providing livestreams, online broadcasts, alternate audience and performance structures and more
• Be intentional in how we operate, communicate and build relationships by being transparent about processes, finances, partners and more and by being direct in our communication style, but most importantly by holding ourselves accountable for our decisions and actions

Caitlin Pencarrick Hertzman, Chair

Jen Pearson, Treasurer

Amos Hertzman, Secretary

Adam Startin, Director

Brady Ciel Marks, Director

Roksan Parfitt, Director

Miguel Maravilla, Director

Max Vargas, Director

Low-carbon website built and designed by:
Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject