Wind Gap Kid's Academy Page

Guitar players should download everything below this, everyone else should download everything above it. 

Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival Kid's Academy Orientation Letter 2025

Welcome to this Year's Wind Gap Bluegrass Kid's Academy! This program is offered for free with your ticket to the festival for kids ages 8-17.

Our schedule starts on Friday at 7:00PM, with an hour and a half orientation class. Saturday will be two hours in the morning, 10:00AM - 12 noon, and two hours in the afternoon, 1:30PM - 3:30PM. Sunday will be two hours in the morning, 10:00AM - 12 noon, followed by an on stage performance at 12:30PM... Friday evening is not required, but is highly recommended.

Students should bring their own instruments. The academy will attempt to supply instruments if necessary, no guarantee on this! The academy will give each student a Wind Gap Bluegrass Academy t-shirt. Please tell Chris Panfil what size T Shirt we should order for your child and we need an emergency cell phone number for a parent. Ours is 716-867-4012.

The academy has room for younger kids ages 5-7 but it requires that a parent stay with the child and they should only attend for the last half hour of the practice sessions.

We will have some cookies and snacks for them. If you would like to send in snacks for us to share with all of the kids, it is appreciated. It is highly recommended that the kids each come with a bottle of water to each session. 

During the hours before, after and between our practice sessions there is NO supervision in our academy area. For safety sake, we ask that kids do not hang around the area except during the practice sessions.

This year we anticipate that some of the kids will want to play music with other kids in high foot traffic areas with an instrument case open for tips, known as "busking". This activity is great for getting them to practice much longer than just sitting alone would. A parent should be present and they should only busk in safe/public areas. If the kids decide to donate some or all of the money to the academy, we ask that they use it to buy raffle tickets for the Martin guitar. That money goes to the academy and who knows, they might win!

The Academy is FREE! Thanks to the C.F. Martin Company for donating a D-16GT guitar with hard shell case. This guitar will be raffled off on Sunday afternoon. Good Luck!

Thanks and let's have some fun playing bluegrass