The Toronto Kiwanis Festival offers over 500 different classes, for all ages and levels, that encompass classical piano, strings, voice, woodwinds, brass, harp and guitar. We also offer classes for those preferring to study current popular genres in voice, piano, musical theatre and guitar. Ensemble classes for school and community bands, choirs and orchestras are also high in demand.

As part of our ongoing evolution, the Festival also strives to recognize and support the multi-cultural aspects of the Toronto community. Every year we evaluate our classes of competition to determine if we can represent more of the musical and arts heritage associated with Toronto’s expanding cultural mosaic. As such, we provide classes for nonwestern stringed instruments (erhu, guzheng and sitar), Japanese taiko drumming, Ukrainian Bandura and this year are adding classes for Indigenous, Bollywood and African music, BIPOC Composer classes as well as the completely new opportunity for the hearing-impaired to join the Festival in ASL singing/signing classes.

Each year we give out approximately $40,000 in scholarships that are given to competitors who have shared their joy of music and excelled in the classes they have entered.  These scholarships start at $50 for the very young ones and for the advanced performers it can go as high as $1,000.

We feel that no child should be left behind and that is why we also have a bursary fund.  If finances are a hurdle to entering the festival, we are able to waive the entry fees, help to pay for buses for school groups or help to pay for accompanists.