By Kevin Kinder

Somewhere Festival is officially returning to downtown Wichita for a two-day live music and community-centric event. The lineup was released July 14 and includes country artist Bailey Zimmerman and DJ Diesel (aka Shaquille O’Neil) as headliners. 

But it’s been a season of change for the festival, and not just the shift from June to September. Changes to the funding structure and partnership dynamics that brought the 2025 version of the festival to fruition left some Wichitans without jobs and others on the sidelines. At the same time, organizers promise a more operationally efficient festival that’s also more in line with the city’s musical tastes. 

The reasons for some changes are intuitive. Raffaele Fazio, a senior leader for the Chase Koch-created organization Movement Musick, said guest feedback demanded changes. Moving the festival from June to late September should ensure cooler weather. Country musicians made the 2026 lineup, also due to audience demand. Organizers had originally steered clear of country acts, feeling like that genre was sufficiently represented elsewhere in Wichita. But artists such as Zimmerman, Ian Munsick and Evan Honer will play this year.

Fazio describes Movement Musick’s early approach to the festival as an “experiment” — trying to determine the best lineup, location and series of offerings to attract the largest possible crowd. There’s a specific push to “bring people downtown that normally wouldn’t be here,” he said.

A music festival can be a high-risk investment. Following a brief resurgence after the pandemic, several major festivals closed, leading some to ponder if festivals were sustainable. The trend continues. Music festival resource Music Festival Wizard has tracked 47 festival cancellations in 2026, including long-established, large-scale events such as Lollapalooza Paris, Punk Rock Bowling, Summer Camp and more. 

Organizers have previously said Somewhere Festival was in a unique situation because it didn’t need to make money, and should be viewed as a service to the community instead. Fazio confirmed this position in a recent phone interview. 

“It’s not designed as a profit-making venture. It’s just not. I wish it was. We view it as part of our social welfare mission,” Fazio said. 

Still, a shift in the presenting organization’s funding priorities is evident. 

How Somewhere Became Something

First, a bit of a history lesson: Somewhere Festival debuted in 2024 as Elsewhere Festival before taking its current name ahead of its 2025 edition. Organizational duties were handled by a Wichita-based music company named Midtopia, which was led by Adam and Jessie Hartke. Adam Hartke previously booked acts for the Wichita River Festival, and the couple are partners in the downtown music venue Wave. With funding from Koch, the Midtopia concept expanded into a full-scale artist management organization, recording studio and festival backbone. 

Koch noted on the self-publishing platform Medium that the goal was to create “a new model for independent music.” In its first year, Elsewhere Fest drew about 14,000 guests to see a lineup that included Killer Mike, Steve Aoki and Vince Staples. About 15,000 attended the rebranded Somewhere Festival in 2025, when the lineup included headliners such as Bigxthaplug, Deadmau5 and Suki Waterhouse. 

In an interview with The SHOUT ahead of the 2025 festival, Jessie Hartke said their nonprofit mentality and philanthropic funding mechanism allowed them to charge less for passes than comparable festivals featuring comparable talent. 

Testing the Strength of the Nonprofit Model 

The organization behind the festival immediately lost money. 

According to 2024 tax records ‘MUSIC ECOSYSTEMS AND ARTIST DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION OF WICHITA INC’ (MEADOW) — doing business as Midtopia — lost approximately $2 million that year. This is according to the organization’s publicly available 990 Form - an IRS form required of tax-exempt nonprofits. Similar records for 2025 were not available at press time, and a Movement Musick spokesperson said that information for the 2025 tax year would not be released until November. MEADOW expenses for 2024 show that just under $1 million was spent on “artist acquisition,” split between two California-based entertainment companies. Another $600,000 for production services was awarded to Event Systems in Wichita.

Midtopia was funded through Chase Koch’s Movement Musick and served as the organizing producers of the first two editions of the festival. In addition to the Hartkes, records listed two other officers serving on Midtopia’s board of directors in 2024: Fazio and Rudy Love Jr., a Wichita-based musician who performs with his own band and also with Chase Koch in a band called 2ŁØT. Midtopia listed 19 employees on their website’s staff page in April of 2024 as planning for the first edition of the festival was underway. 

Their funding ended sometime after the 2025 edition of the festival. 

Neither Jessie nor Adam Hartke responded to multiple requests for comment. In a public post on LinkedIn dated July 7, Jessie Hartke acknowledged the organization’s closure. 

“Midtopia was funded by a single philanthropic source and was always structured as a time limited initiative. When the funding cycle concluded, my job shifted from building the organization to closing it responsibly. Wrapping programs, protecting continuity for the artists and community we served, and leading a team of 20 through their own uncertainty,” she wrote. 

The SHOUT reached out to several former Midtopia employees for comments on the impact of their work and their experience within the organization. None agreed to go on the record, and several noted they were under a non-disclosure agreement as part of their exit from the organization. The SHOUT also reached out to nine former bands represented by Midtopia. Some were still on the roster at the time of the closure, meaning they would have lost artist services like management and promotion when the organization dissolved. None of those bands agreed to speak on the record. 

During the shutdown process, Midtopia vacated the former Somewhere Works building at 235 N. Emporia. The Chase Koch-owned venue entered into a partnership with Wichita State University on Dec. 1, 2025. Classes in the School of Digital Arts at WSU were offered inside Somewhere Works in the spring 2026 academic semester, and following a successful pilot, classes will return there in the fall semester, said Justin Rorabaugh, director of the School of Digital Arts and Shocker Studios. 

The partnership is paying dividends for the university, Rorabaugh said. The digital arts program is already the fast-growing school within Wichita State, and it has recently hired nine new faculty members to accommodate growth. 

The use of the Somewhere Works building complements the existing Shocker Studios space and allows for real-world experience that should create paths for those who want careers in the music industry — much like the Midtopia model that Chase Koch outlined when he funded the organization. 

“It’s a catalyst that drives opportunities for students,” Rorabaugh said. 

Both Rorabaugh and Fazio expressed an interest in facilitating student opportunities through Somewhere Fest, but the idea has not been formalized between the two parties.

A Kansas Open Records Act request filed in February asked Wichita State for copies of contracts signed by WSU and Movement Musick. It yielded only one return: a confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement from May 2025.

It was recently announced that the former Walker’s Jazz Lounge on North Mosley Street will also occupy the Somewhere Works space on weekend evenings. Now calling themselves Walker’s @ Works, shows are scheduled to begin in the space later this month with the goal to be fully operational in the space by September.

A Koch spokesperson confirmed this development does not change any Somewhere Fest-related plans for the venue.

Displaced 

Midtopia publicly announced in March that its operations were shifting from a full-service management and artist development resource into a recording studio only. A request for comment sent to the main studio contact email listed on Midtopia’s website was met with an “address not found” notice. The organization maintains its recording studio at 424 Greenwood.

By proxy, the changing funding mechanism also impacts locals who were sub-contracted through Midtopia. The largest of those is Harvester Arts, a Wichita arts organization that tax records indicate received in excess of $300,000 from Midtopia in 2024. Tax records for Harvester show they spent $390,000 on contractors and artists in the same year.

Harvester Arts executive director Kristin Beal said her organization has not been contacted by Somewhere Fest about having any role in the 2026 edition of the festival, noting that the previous contract through Midtopia enabled the organization to pay more than 150 local artists to work with New York City-based resident artist Aaron Asis. 

“The opportunity for local artists to collaborate across disciplines at that scale is not typical in our region, so I am grateful for the opportunity and proud of what we accomplished together. We are seeing the lasting impact of those relationships as new collaborations develop, and I look forward to seeing how the festival comes together this year,” Beal said in a written statement provided to The SHOUT. 

Some former contractors have been retained, though. Event Systems owner Josh Gordon confirmed that his company handled festival production services in 2025 and is contracted to do so again in 2026.

A Renewed Vision for 2026 

Local partnerships are still being developed for the 2026 festival, Fazio said. Participants for the community street fair are being recruited by Stand Together —  also a Koch venture — and the Kansas Health Foundation. Both organizations helped recruit participants for the fair at last year’s festival. 

The result is a slightly rebranded version of last year’s “Change Starts Somewhere” community vendor festival. The Community Block Party, as it’s now known, is free and open to all ages. It has a focus on “engaging and fun activations that will demonstrate the role you can play in solving problems in your community,” according to the festival. 

Last year was billed as the Somewhere Festival and Conference. The conference portion of the festival will not return in 2026, organizers confirmed.

Fazio said that Midtopia was never meant to be a permanent fixture and said Movement Musick still works with the Hartkes. Fazio acknowledged the impact of the closure but said that it should be classified as a shift in resources to other projects that will help Wichitans. 

And to be sure, Movement Musick has several of them in motion. Chase Koch has purchased multiple downtown buildings, including formerly abandoned locations like the Where House at 226 N. Emporia Ave., now a community stage during Somewhere Fest. 

Through the Wichita Business Journal, Movement Musick has also announced plans to renovate the Shirkmere Apartments, build a music venue and partner with a regional grocery operator to open a grocery store in the immediate vicinity of the other developments. 

Those ongoing projects will take years to fully manifest, but Somewhere Festival is meant to be an integral, more immediate part of Movement’s idea for a revitalized downtown. 

The festival has a “long-term impact on the creative ecosystem,” Fazio said. “We benefit when people visit.” 

Somewhere Fest’s footprint extends roughly between Emporia Avenue, St. Francis Street, and 1st and 2nd streets. There are six stages, and only two of them require tickets. A large food truck court will open to the public during the festival weekend.

The two main stages that require paid admission are the same as in 2025. Festival headliners will be split between two stages: Wave, and the purpose-built outdoor stage called Where Else. Between them is a new offering – the Some One stage, which is a spotlight for local performers. 

It serves as part of the two somewhat dichotomous principles of the festival: showcasing local talent and bringing in national artists who wouldn’t otherwise come to Wichita. Booking has been a collaborative effort between Adam Hartke and an organization called Breakaway Festival, which produces a touring festival circuit. The latter has been contracted to add efficiencies to the booking process, but Fazio said that Movement Musick has a final say. 

“We’re deeply involved in all booking decisions,” he said. “It stops with us.” 

Fazio said the response to the 2026 lineup has been strong so far, although he did not share a concrete number. There are a number of new VIP passes being offered for the festival, but Fazio said the emphasis remains on offering low-price options. A two-day general admission pass is $133 (fees included).  

Fazio said that more details about the festival will be unveiled in the coming weeks. The new announcements will include additional artists who will perform at the festival. 

Kevin Kinder never learned to play an instrument but has written about music for more than two decades just the same. He’s a freelance writer and journalism educator. 

Taylor Waller is a mixed-media artist, an art historian, a journalist, and the digital editor for The SHOUT.

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