(NOVEMBER 8, 2024 – IOWA CITY, IA) — Mission Creek Festival returns to downtown Iowa City on Thursday, April 3 through Saturday, April 5, 2025 for its 20th year of music, literature, and community events. Since 2006, Mission Creek Festival has welcomed hundreds of independent musicians, writers, and publishers to venues all across Iowa City, drawing in tens of thousands of participants over the years.
Celebrating Twenty Years
The 2025 festival marks the 20th iteration of this annual spring tradition. This includes the two years in 2020 and 2021 when the festival presented virtual performances and readings. “It’s kind of unbelievable that we’ve arrived at year twenty,” said Festival Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Andre Perry. “I remember when we weren’t sure if we’d even make it to year five.”
Perry co-founded the festival in spring 2006 alongside friends Tanner Illingworth and Jeff Ray. Illingworth and Perry were students at the University of Iowa, and Ray–who had started the original Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco–was living in the Bay Area. Perry said, “Although he lived in San Francisco at the time, Jeff provided endless encouragement and wisdom as we launched the first event in the Midwest.” The inaugural event was called Mission Creek Midwest Festival, but eventually became Mission Creek Festival.
A Look Back
The early years of Mission Creek Festival embodied a “DIY” spirit with a sense of community at its core, much of which still prevails twenty years later. Perry and Illingworth self-financed the endeavor at first, and then partnered with additional co-producers. At its initial peak, the team included Perry and Illingworth, plus audio engineer and carpenter Matthew Rebelskey, producer and podcaster Craig Eley, and late programmer Christopher Wiersema (who would go on to develop Feed Me Weird Things).
As the festival grew, it further embedded itself in the community, working with many venues in town from The Mill to Gabe’s to The Yacht Club to Public Space One and The Blue Moose. It also expanded beyond those traditional walls, into boutiques like Revival, Catherine’s, Beadology, and even more untraditional spaces like First United Methodist Church. The festival’s identity became woven into the fabric of Iowa City, transforming into a celebration of the city itself as much as it was a celebration of independent art and voices.
Mission Creek landed artists right before they grew into larger spotlights and presented them in the most intimate spaces, including The Tallest Man on Earth’s legendary performance at Public Space One when it was still in the basement of the Jefferson Building, Killer Mike at The Blue Moose, and—in its first of many collaborations with SCOPE—Bon Iver at the Black Box Theater in the IMU. The festival grew during a golden age of independent music, and as its reputation spread throughout music and literature circles, it expanded, at one point, to seven days to accommodate all the incredible artists asking to come through Iowa City.
In 2014, The Englert Theatre became the official producer of Mission Creek, taking on the festival’s programming, production, and marketing duties. For the past ten years, Mission Creek Festival has been a cornerstone of The Englert’s mission, program, and annual budget.
“The Englert stepping in and supporting the festival led to some of our most miraculous programs,” said Perry. “That first year with The Englert, we pulled together our most ambitious show at the time with Philip Glass and Oneohtrix Point Never. That was the first collaboration Chris Wiersema and I built together from the ground up. And somehow, it was a hit. I remember Chris and I were sitting next to each other in The Englert while Glass played a song in sync with a recording of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra,’ and we both had tears in our eyes.”
Over a decade of partnership with The Englert, the festival welcomed incredible voices to Iowa City, from Mitski to Rachel Kushner, from Silver Apples to Roxane Gay, from Jim Jarmusch to John Waters. Moreso, alongside those touring musicians and writers, Mission Creek celebrated local bands and literary voices hailing from Iowa.
After virtual performances in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mission Creek returned live in 2022, with viral indie sensations Beach Bunny and Soccer Mommy headlining, plus unforgettable performances by the likes of Arooj Aftab and Haley Heynderickx. In 2023, a new phase of partnership began with Hancher Auditorium, as they became the official hosts of the festival’s first night, featuring Cat Power and Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast). This allowed the festival to further branch out within Iowa City, reaching new audiences and new heights.
New Futures
To make space for future projects, The Englert will step down from producing Mission Creek Festival after 2025. “It’s a bittersweet moment for us and our whole team,” said The Englert’s Executive Director, John Schickedanz. “Mission Creek has been part of our identity for over a decade. The relationship has been so beneficial, and it’s really gone both ways. Producing the festival has allowed us to bring so many brilliant artists to our community. Neither the festival nor The Englert would be where we are today without this partnership.”
“For the twentieth Creek, we knew we had to go big,” said Festival Director, Brian Johannesen. “Mission Creek has been so instrumental for so many of us in Iowa City, both as a music discovery tool and an opportunity to see our favorite artists up close. In that spirit, we are not only bringing new and exciting artists to the lineup, but also going deep and welcoming back some longtime friends of Mission Creek—artists that played legendary sets or did amazing readings—who have helped define this experience over the past two decades and hold a special place in our hearts.”
The Englert has plans for new programming opportunities that will be announced in spring of 2025. Likewise, Perry, in his role at the UI’s Hancher Auditorium and Office of Performing Arts and Engagement, is also developing a new event that will launch in spring of 2026.
There are also plans for a new chapter of Mission Creek. A new version of the event will emerge in 2026 in the hands of the festival’s co-founders and current Literary Programming Director, Nina Lohman. In addition to handling literary duties for Mission Creek, Lohman recently released her first book The Body Alone, publishes the multigenre literary journal Brink, and serves as a visiting assistant professor in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program.
While many details are still in-the-works for the next iteration of Mission Creek, Perry did say this: “We are going back to our roots, to our fundamentals. So much has changed in the music industry and the literary world since we started twenty years ago. We want to build something that’s an essential space for emerging and underground musicians, writers, and publishers, especially from Iowa and the Midwest. What Nina is doing with Brink reflects a highly innovative and unshakably independent ethos. That’s where Mission Creek started and then it kind of grew into something else and that’s cool. Now it’s time to come home.”
The full artist lineup for 2025 will be announced on Friday, December 13, and to commemorate, The Englert is partnering with the Iowa City Flea Market to host a special winter flea market inside of the theatre. The IC Flea Market event, happening on December 13 from 5 to 9pm, will be free and open to the public. Along with browsing dozens of local and regional vendors, attendees will have the opportunity to earn free merchandise and passes for the upcoming festival.
Early bird passes for 2025 will be on sale starting December 13.
Thank you to our festival partners & sponsors: GreenState Credit Union (Title Sponsor), Hancher Auditorium, SCOPE Productions, Ulysses Modern, Honeybee Hair Parlor, Bread Garden Market, Spare Me!, Tuesday Agency, City of Iowa City, Goodfellow Printing, Graduate Iowa City, Iowa Public Radio, James Investment Group, Kim Schillig Realtor, Little Village, Phoebe Martin Realtor, Reunion Brewery, Dr. Suzanne Stock, West Music
