Wichita Has an Art Scene: Reflections on Forever Fest 2026

I’ll admit, when I first heard about Forever Fest, a part of me I’m actively trying to shed was cynical about anything so idealistic that it trusted people to be its financial backers.

In this economy??

I say that as a meme, but also as someone who spent seven years working in the world of money.

But part of being human is learning when to unlearn something, and when to lean into a dream.

And this weekend, that dream was thriving in Wichita.

As a lifelong advocate for Wichita’s arts and music scene, I am incredibly proud of what was accomplished. I’m also grateful to have reached a place in my career where I can participate in sponsoring (thank you Wichita Symphony) something that places real value on artists, musicians, sound engineers, independent venues, service industry workers, documentarians, and all the people whose labor makes a creative community possible.

Because walking around downtown this weekend, I kept thinking: why should this feeling be annual?

I see a Wichita where the energy that filled the streets this weekend isn’t reserved for one festival.

Where support for the arts is monthly.

Where the desire to seek out local creativity is daily.

Where the opportunity to show our love for the people creating it is forever.

I don’t think I fully understood this until recently, but being a multidisciplinary creative while also working professionally within the arts has changed how I see my place in all of this. Art doesn’t stay alive simply because it exists. A creative community survives because people keep choosing to make things, choosing to show up, choosing to give them space, choosing to document them, choosing to pay for them, and choosing to believe they are worth sustaining.

That choice is infrastructure.

Spending this weekend among musicians, artists, venues, documentarians, organizers, and the people who came downtown to experience all of it left me feeling like maybe more people are seeing what I’ve been seeing.

Wichita doesn’t need to become a city with an art scene.

Wichita has an art scene.

It is happening now.

And, if we keep choosing it, forever.