Day Party is a brand-spanking-new arts festival launching this April on the south side of downtown Iowa City. Spring in town has long been associated with Mission Creek, which in 2025 celebrated its 12th (and final) year as a multi-day festival.
The first thing that strikes one about Day Party is that it packs an ambitious amount of events and energy into a single day, hence its name. The festival is a collaborative endeavor of the Mission Creek Festival and Brink, the Iowa City-based nonprofit independent publisher behind the Brink Literary Journal and Brink Books. The collaboration seeks to create intimate arts experiences rooted in food, literature, hybrid art and music. Like Mission Creek, Day Party’s concurrent programming gives participants the opportunity to talk about art and experience it directly.
“Throughout the day,” festival co-organizer and Brink publisher Nina Lohman said, “from about noon until early evening, we’ll be hosting multi-modal conversations at Little Village, food and music at Plated Table, and music and food at Trumpet Blossom. Public Space One, both the Close House and the Cloud House, will hold our literary and hybrid art experiences. And there will be food trucks outside PS1!”
Day Party can be thought of as a hybrid crop — one that has been spliced together from the roots of the venerable Mission Creek and Brink. Brink Literary Journal was founded by Lohman to create a space for cross-genre and unclassifiable forms of writing. After starting out as a magazine, Brink has evolved into an organization dedicated to multidisciplinary voices in literature.
“I really feel like Brink is leaning into that multidisciplinary hybrid form,” Mission Creek co-founder and Hancher executive director Andre Perry said, “and it’s almost like literature-plus, in its understanding that narrative stories or poetry or abstract expression can happen through the word and it has also been happening with these other mediums. And I think Nina and her team are really open to that idea.”
Day Party builds on the same collaborative work that Perry has done with others for decades.
“When Mission Creek Festival started,” Lohman observed, “Iowa City wasn’t home to any major festivals. But now we have Infinite Dream, Refocus, Stop/Time, Open Air Media Festival, and several more.”
With these cultural cornerstones now in place, Lohman and Perry were curious about how (and what) they could program for the community that wasn’t going to replicate or compete with those existing festivals. The two wondered, first, how they could create an artist-focused event that fosters connection between artists and audiences and, second, how that could be done sustainably as people with other jobs and families and creative pursuits of their own.
“Day Party is our answer to those questions,” Lohman said. “It’s our way of nurturing the creative community that exists in this corner of the Midwest. It’s the next iteration of the Mission Creek Festival, and it’s a step forward into the literary production work Brink hopes to do more of in our community.”
Day Party is a delicious gumbo of bands, chefs, multidisciplinary artists and writers. Most participants are from Iowa, with a few visiting artists like Chicagoans Sima Cunningham (of Finom) and Sam Prekop. Cunningham, who released the album High Roller in 2024, will perform with her full band while Prekop offers a solo set of synthesizer and electronic works.
Lohman said that additional musical acts include indie rockers Dearborn, jazz-experimental ensemble Freegrass featuring Alyx Rush, avant-rock duo KL!NG, ambient musician Glab II, experimental composers Dayvyd Lunch and Gabi Vanek, and art-rockers Younger, who will be releasing their new album at the festival — a Day Party release party, if you will.
Writer Nora Lange, based in Salt Lake City, will appear at Day Party in support of her new book Day Care. Lange will be joined in a reading series by Iowa City-based writers Sarah Anjum Bari and Pia Struzzieri. Other writers and artists include poet/artist Annelyse Gelman in collaboration with musician Ramin Roshandel, author/screenwriters Rachel Yoder, Laura Conway and Ben Donehower in conversation, literary/visual/performing artists Johanna Winters and Sarah Minor presenting new puppet-based work, installation artist Jason J. Snell, filmmaker Auden Lincoln-Vogel debuting an Iowa City-based work-in-progress film and writer/artist Kate E. Hinshaw in conversation with Sima Cunningham.
Lohman said that food will also play a central role in Day Party. It features the work of a range of chefs, including pioneering vegan chef Katy Meyer of Trumpet Blossom Cafe, chef Alex Smith of Plated Table, Sandy and Vivian Pei of Snacky Mini Mart, Dolly Sperry of Mazee’s Food Truck and Pete Kerns of Lambs Quarters Livestock.
“All the energy happening down there on the south side of Iowa City is incredible,” Perry said. “I’m thinking about Little Village, Plated Table, Trumpet Blossom, Public Space One. The Bike Library is not very far, Honeybee is not very far. I could keep going, but it just seems like there’s so many people committed to having awesome community spaces down there, whether it’s literally getting your hair styled at Honeybee, or eating food, and then maybe later in the day, seeing a show at Trumpet Blossom.”
With Day Party, Lohman and Perry wanted to tap into the energy that the south side’s been building for years and to make those connections stronger. Another key goal of the festival is rooted in its name.
“It’s a one-day festival for several reasons, some of them practical and logistical, others maybe more on the spiritual and creative side,” Perry explained. “It seemed like a fun challenge to see what we could cook up in such a small timeframe, from early afternoon to earlyish evening. Having a shorter timeframe means putting it together and not stressing out all the people involved, because all the people involved are stressed out doing a million other things.”
In other words, Lohman and Perry wanted to create an event that’s engaging but low-pressure. Part of that means making it accessible to multiple audiences — a bite-sized celebration of community and the arts for all ages.
“Over the course of 20 years,” Nina Lohman said, “Mission Creek Festival evolved from a small, grassroots festival into a springtime staple in Iowa City. We’re proud of that legacy, and we are equally stoked to usher in the next iteration of the festival in collaboration with the hybrid writing and arts focus central to Brink’s mission.”
Andre Perry added, “Day Party is a reminder that, alongside all the challenges we might face in our community, we can still spend some fraction of our time leaning into and celebrating those really good things.”
Upcoming event:
Day Party, Saturday, April 25, 12-8 p.m., various locations in south side Iowa City
