Porch party season: ‘It’s good for your soul to feel that you belong to something special’
It’s porch party season in Waterloo Region.
If you haven’t been to one yet, you have a real treat coming. There’s nothing like a porch party to turn strangers into neighbours.
Across the region, groups of volunteers are planning for them throughout the summer. Musicians, both amateur and professional, perform on the front porch of someone’s home. Meanwhile, passersby take in the music from the sidewalk, street or front lawn.
Often, there are other activities like sidewalk chalk art, food vendors, outdoor yoga or a scavenger hunt for kids.
It’s a great way to visit another neighbourhood and admire its particular beauty: the graceful curve of a street you never knew existed, a peach tree (imagine that, this far north!) thriving in a front garden, the way the lateafternoon sun makes red bricks glow.
The pace is slower. On this day, it’s people who own the street, not cars. Activities are focused on the front porch — the part of the home that welcomes the newcomer — instead of the backyard retreat.
It’s a wonderful opportunity to “reimagine how space can be used,” says Laura McBride, an organizer of the Hohner Avenue Porch Party, which happens this Saturday in Kitchener.
This will be the fifth year for
the party on Hohner Avenue, a street that runs off Lancaster Avenue near Suddaby Public School in downtown Kitchener.
McBride said the first party locally was the Grand Porch Party in the Uptown West section of Waterloo. That was “an inspiration” for the Hohner Avenue party.
However, the concept has been around for de- cades in other parts of North America such as Ithaca and Lewiston in New York state, McBride said.
What she really loves about these kinds of events is the diverse crowd they attract. Visitors of all ages come by. They’re free, so there is no income barrier (costs are paid from municipal grants or through donations).
Most porch party musicians are local folk or folk-rock singers. But because many of the musicians from the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony orchestra tend to live in the Hohner Avenue neighbourhood, they sometimes will perform.
This year, the party will feature accordion playing from Mahfouz Al-Sheikh, a recent immigrant from Syria whose family became friends with McBride shortly after they moved here.
The best part about these events is the way people can feel connected, McBride said.
“It’s good for your soul to feel that you belong to something that’s special.”