PRESS RELEASE - Reimagined Soundcheck Festival Returns to Port Townsend

Highlighting Port Townsend’s creative spirit with a weekend of participatory, artist-driven events and experiences

December 29, 2025 PORT TOWNSEND –In February 2026, the City will celebrate the people and experiences that bring creativity to life in our community during the Soundcheck Art and Music Festival. From Friday, February 27 through Sunday, March 1, arts-centered workshops, projects, and performances will happen across Port Townsend. Soundcheck is a free, all-ages event sponsored by the City’s Creative District and organized in partnership with dozens of local artists and organizations.

Reimagined as a festival for a darker and slower time of year, Soundcheck will foster a mix of excitement and reflection, hands-on making, and appreciation for human creativity. With a 
focus on connecting the community through the arts, it highlights youth artists, and emphasizeshands-on engagement, offering participants the chance to make something together. The multidisciplinary weekend will feature music, poetry, visual art, conceptual art, dance, tech, film, theatre, culinary arts, literary events, and photography. 

“What I'm most excited about is how Soundcheck is focused on celebrating the act of making and all that it does and can entail,” says artist Michelle Hagewood, who is organizing a Pop-up Maker Fair for Sunday, March 1, and has been helping shape the event’s greater ethos. “This is a festival where the attendees can become the featured artists themselves and experience the magic of creativity alongside one another.”

Taking place over three days, the festival will kick off on Friday, February 27 at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds with the Port Townsend Art Commission’s Art Awards, followed by a community pasta feed ($10 suggested donation per adult; no one turned away) and DJ dance party. On Saturday, February 28, events will take place in Downtown Port Townsend, including performances in the historic City Council Chambers, an artist salon and café, and hands-on making in the “Creation Station.” Saturday night will host a lineup of local bands at the American Legion Hall. On Sunday, March 1, the festival moves to Fort Worden for a pancake breakfast and walking tour to launch the Port Townsend Public Library’s 2026 Community Read, along with drop-in artist-hosted workshops including dance, tech, film, poetry, and zine making. 

In addition to the weekend’s scheduled events, participants from the Youth Reporting Project, a program of local news outlet The Beacon, in partnership with the arts and education non-profit Centrum, will be documenting and reporting on the festival through reviews, interviews, news stories, and photojournalism.

Soundcheck was launched in 2019 as a showcase for local musicians in conjunction with the inaugural THING festival in Port Townsend. After being shepherded by many community volunteers and the Port Townsend Main Street program, its management moved under the City in spring of 2025. With THING no longer taking place in Port Townsend, a small steering committee of local artists have helped reimagine the event as a distinct celebration of the artsthat built on Soundcheck’s past success while thinking about what a wintertime festival could look and feel like. Artist Rose Burt designed the 2026 Soundcheck illustration with this time of year in mind.

“It’s been amazing thinking about what Soundcheck means now with artists from the community,” says Katy Goodman, the City’s Arts and Culture Coordinator. “I am so inspired by everyone’s ideas and thoughtfulness about what would make the event special for both audiences and participating artists. We heard clearly that we needed to create something fun and authentic that included youth and families while recognizing how it feels to be an artist at the end of the long, dark winter. I hope everyone will come be a part of it and access that creative, generative voice inside themselves."