Built slow, on purpose

Andrea Graham and Liz Thomson met after both moved to Whistler and bonded over music at Burning Man. In 2009 they threw the first Bass Coast in the forests of Squamish, BC, planning for 1,000 people and getting about 400. The festival nearly doubled most years after that, and in 2013 the founders moved it to its current site in the Nicola Valley near Merritt, with a river running through the grounds. By 2017 it had grown to roughly 4,500 people across four stages. Today attendance is intentionally capped at 6,500, a ceiling the founders have held to on purpose rather than chasing scale.

Two women, two jobs

Thomson and Graham split the festival's two creative halves. Graham curates the music, reviewing around 700 applications a year and running finalists through a blind listening process before filling a single set time. Thomson runs the art program through artist grants that favor emerging talent with an original idea over polished, familiar installations, a bet that has paid off in artists who return year after year once art becomes their focus. The result is a festival with no corporate sponsorship, run by women, built stage by stage around whoever earns the slot rather than who can headline a poster.

Stages built like rooms, not platforms

Bass Coast's stages are designed as environments rather than backdrops. Slay Bay, designed by Thomson, wraps the crowd in a 360-degree structure under a dramatic sail roof. The Cabin Stage draws on backcountry snowboarding and mountain imagery and swings from funk and soul to techno and experimental bass. The Dream Chamber sits apart, riverside, running yoga and workshops by day and shifting to ambient and downtempo music by night for anyone who needs to come down before going back out.

Care as part of the design

Bass Coast has run an on-site harm reduction program since it moved to Merritt in 2013, adding clinical-grade drug checking in 2019 in partnership with Interior Health and the BC Centre on Substance Use. The Sanctuary, a staffed tent with air mattresses, exists for anyone overwhelmed by sensory overload or anxiety. The program explicitly centers queer safety, a reflection of underground music culture's own roots. DJ Mag named Bass Coast Best Boutique Festival in North America in both 2019 and 2023, recognition the festival's founders have credited to the community that shows up to build it every year.