‘I Really Want the Community to Shape It’: Tacoma Porchfest’s Organizer Looks Back on 5 Years

It isn’t uncommon for new brand-new groups to emerge from Tacoma Porchfest, organizer Irina Rasputnis said last week.

“Every year I hear from bands, like, ‘Wow, this band that you placed (us on the same porch) with, we’re going to start gigging together; we’re going to start playing together,” she said.

Those breakthroughs of community connection are one of the main reasons Rasputnis started organizing Porchfest in the first place. Launched in 2022 and returning this year from July 18-19, the event sees a huge swath of the Central Tacoma area reimagined as the grounds of a two-day music festival. The twist? Nearly all the performances take place on the front porches and yards of the denizens that call that particular neighborhood home.

“It was really big the first year,” recalled Rasputnis, who also performs with her own band at the event. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We were kind of just knocking on doors, asking people to be porch hosts to host bands on their porches. Most people didn’t seem interested in that.”

Musician response, though, was immediate: 50 bands signed up for the first Porchfest overnight. That clear thirst inspired Rasputnis to maintain a we-need-to-make-this-happen mindset that she’s never lost. Local engagement and Rasputnis’ own determination have helped turn the gathering into a hit for which Tacomans save the date. Except for 2026, it’s doubled in size every subsequent year it’s been put on. (It’s “getting to the point where doubling would be ridiculous” to keep so dramatically ballooning in attendance, Rasputnis noted.)

Like many other similar events that have sprung up around the country in the last few years, Tacoma Porchfest was partly a product of a COVID-era desire for social interaction. In 2019, Rasputnis moved to the Northwest from Boston for a job at Seattle City Light. (She still works there by day as the executive director of The Lab at City Light, a division she described as a training and education resource for people in the building trades.) She spent about a year in Seattle before relocating to Tacoma. There, she saw a lot of parallels with the neighborhood in which she’d previously lived on the East Coast, namely its deep passion for the arts. Because of her new neighborhood’s friendliness and predilection for block parties, she saw the potential for an event like Porchfest even before lockdown forced mass retreat.

The isolation many felt as they precautionarily stayed at home was particularly intense for Rasputnis, who gave birth just before the pandemic began and was on maternity leave as it continued to unfold. “You feel so isolated already as a new mom and just really craving connection,” she remembered.

A little while later, she started getting involved in local marches, often in a volunteer capacity, for Black lives following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. “There was a lot of music involved in the marches and protests,” she said. “I kind of got reconnected to this sense that music is a vehicle for connection, for protest, for engagement, and it kind of came together with Porchfest.”

Rasputnis met many new people through her participation in the demonstrations. One was another mom in her neighborhood. They and their kids started spending time together, and during one of their hangouts she mentioned her idea for Porchfest. “Right away, (my friend) was like, ‘Oh my god, we have to do it! When are we doing it? Can we do it now?’ She really egged me on,” Rasputnis said.

Rasputnis originally envisioned a 2021 kickoff date that was ultimately delayed because of a second COVID wave. Since “2022 was kind of when people started getting back out again,” it felt like — and proved to be — a better time.

“When we launched Porchfest, there was kind of this magic moment of, like, musicians were eager to get back performing in front of people in person instead of live streaming their sets from, like, the living room or whatever, and people wanted to get back out in a way that still felt safe to them,” she said.

Part of the continuing interest in Porchfest, Rasputnis theorized, is that it’s unlike any other festival most people would go to. “It’s very large in size and scale, but still, it’s very community-based,” she said. “It’s very grassroots; it’s in the neighborhood, it’s on the porch, which is typically a private, intimate space. On Porchfest day, you’re allowed to go into your neighbor’s porch and maybe you’ll have a conversation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and then, maybe next year, that conversation will grow and build, and it’ll form a deeper connection over time. That’s kind of what I’m after; that’s why I’m doing this.”

While Porchfest still primarily consists of musical performances, it’s diversified its lineup. It also includes a parade, film screenings, poetry readings, tap dancing, character-cosplay displays, and even wrestling matches. Sometimes hosts want to do more than just support a concert. Rasputnis has gotten requests to, for instance, shut down a whole street so that a participant could organize a quasi-street party. Another wanted it to be broadcast to visitors that they’d have a bouncy house and yard games for kids to play in. “There’s so many things people reach out to me (about) all the time, and I’m like, ‘That sounds great; we’re gonna try to make that happen.’ And if it doesn’t happen, it’s not because we didn’t try,” she said.

Rasputnis has always wanted the event to be community-led rather than something she commandeers with a tight grip. Besides sometimes participating in interviews, “I don’t make myself very prominent as, like, ‘I’m the person behind the festival’ … I really want the community to shape it.”

Rasputnis knows that not everybody who lives within Porchfest’s radius is enthused about having their neighborhood swarmed with people. To mitigate conflict, she warns residents months in advance so that they can plan accordingly; she also said she’s happy to collaborate on plans to ensure no one feels trapped. “This year, one of the streets that we’re closing off, the couple that lives there is getting married, and they need to be in and out of their house all day getting to the wedding venue,” she said. “They reached out, and we came up with a plan. But if they hadn’t reached out, then I wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t be able to come up with a plan, and that would definitely create tension.”

Rasputnis has additionally gotten feedback that can have what sounds like an undercurrent of passive aggression. People from other parts of Tacoma want to have their own version of Porchfest in their neighborhood; the subtext, it sometimes seems, is that they feel excluded or overlooked. (Some messages Rasputnis has received, however, don’t quite limit that resentment to subtext.) “I do Porchfest in the neighborhood that I live in,” Rasputnis explained. “That’s kind of my rationale for why I placed it where it is, and I would love to see more Porchfests happening throughout the city. I just only have capacity for the one that I do.”

Porchfest is entirely volunteer-run. It has a committee that convenes throughout the year to plan and gear up for things like permitting and grant writing. Close to 200 people arrive during the event to help out. The gathering now gets funding from the city; Rasputnis wants to get things to a place where she can more consistently pay people for their work. “We paid 300 bands last year, and a portion — a small portion, but a portion — of the bands donate their payment back into the festival, which is so nice of them … In addition to paying the bands, I’m also working to pay the people involved in making Porchfest happen, because, right now, we’re kind of just at that token-of-gratitude level of payment,” she said.

With so many moving parts, Rasputnis knows it’s unavoidable that things won’t fully go according to plan. But, to her, that’s part of Porchfest’s charm.

“There will be a level of chaos: someone’s car won’t start, and someone’s band will break up that morning, and the fuse will glow — anything can happen,” she said. “I really consider that kind of chaos that creates to be part of the magic of the festival. I ask people to give each other a little bit of extra grace and just go with the flow … The messiness is also part of the beauty that we are as humans.”

Those interested in donating to or volunteering at Tacoma Porchfest can go to the event’s website.