More than 100 acts played across 10 Wichita venues Aug. 22d in the inaugural Wichita Forever Fest, a free, all-day music festival organized entirely by volunteers.

The event ran from noon until after 1 a.m., with 30-minute sets separated by 15-minute breaks so attendees could travel between stages. Co-founders Patrick Heath, 24, and Keo Fletcher, both Wichita State University alumni, conceived the idea in January over coffee and spent eight months organizing it.

Each venue was programmed around a genre. R&B and hip hop filled the Arcade. Country and blues took over Central Standard Brewing. Pop rock and alternative acts played Nortons. The Furnace hosted 12 hardcore, metal and punk bands. Harvester Arts staged 13 variety acts. With the exception of Kirby's Beer Store, all venues were open to all ages.

Paying every performer was a founding principle. Heath told The Sunflower in an Aug. 24 interview that it was non-negotiable: "A big priority to us was making sure that all the artists got paid, because we want to make sure that we are not setting any bad precedents."

The festival was crowdfunded through donations and sponsorships via fiscal sponsorship with Harvester Arts, the local nonprofit. KAKE-TV also sponsored the event.

Reviewer Emily Christensen, co-founder of The SHOUT, wrote that the quality surprised her. She described the performers as genuinely good, not merely good by local standards, and singled out Kapten, Bri McBride, Yasmin Nur, Sunblush and Yae as standouts.

Dahlima Kapten, both a festival organizer and frontwoman of the band Kapten, performed a 9:15 p.m. set at Kirby's Beer Store. She described one song as her "love-hate letter to Kansas."

The lineup spanned generations. Bill Goffrier and John Nichols of The Embarrasmen, an offshoot of The Embarrassment, a rock band formed at WSU in 1979, performed at the Backbeat. At the other end, Tyka, an indie-pop group of WSU students that started performing together in November 2025, took the stage. Drummer Hudson Garcia, 18, is a self-taught musician and WSU Tech freshman.

The Petals, formerly known as Zuzu Petals, played their final show at the festival. Lead singer Jacob Anderson announced he was moving the next day to pursue a PhD in creative writing in Kalamazoo.

Behind the scenes, around 40 volunteer creatives donated their time to photograph and film the day, according to a post by Wichita By E.B. Heath said many volunteers had been working roughly 40 hours a week on the festival on top of other commitments.

Whether the festival returns is uncertain. Heath told The Sunflower the team needs rest and funding before a second edition can happen. "It's really draining, not only on us, but our families," he said in the Aug. 24 interview. "I think we all just need a break and we need time to reassess. And then we need funding."

No attendance figures have been released. The Wichita Eagle published a photo and video recap on Aug. 23, and The SHOUT reported positive community response online.

Heath told The Sunflower he hopes the model inspires others: "I think it shows the power of collective voice, especially with the way we were able to do it completely with the power of artists, and we didn't even need … some big corporation to come in and make it happen. We just did it ourselves."