The Atchison Jazz and Blues Festival is a production of Atchison Jazz & Blues Society, an affilate 501c3 nonprofit focused on Performing Arts & Education. 

Mission:

• Advancing community engagement through Performing Arts in Jazz & Blues standards.

Vision:

• We engage the local community in all our productions: the bi-annual Atchison Jazz and Blues Festival and annual Christmas Holiday Jazz in Atchison Event Center at No Cost to the public.  Yes, we create gigs that move the local talent out into the many venues for jazz standard play via our inititiatives of Concerts in the Park series, Concerts in the square, 7th & Commercial.

• We galvanize & forge ahead the community of Atchison's future in the Jazz and Blues scene by developing both venues and thier owners with budgets & profitability in mind, we help put an end to Atchison businesses having to operate a live music program at a loss. We develop audience engagment, marketing strategies, and building coalitions with local academia, press, radio, and film...and developing musicians through rehearsals, mentoring, teaching, and promotion.

• We develop economic activity by building local jazz & blues bands and HIRE musicians for rehearsing, performance & arranging. 

• We answer the dillema of bringing an added sense of dignity and respect to live music performance that's been previously missing. We answer the issue of expecting musicians to work for free & voluntarily, or sometimes under even deprived conditions at a loss. 

• We support other local venues who host other genres on other days/nights. * while our advocacy gives priority rooted in blues and jazz. We will use our leadership, resources, to influence and support all forms of live music in Atchison, where we can. 

• We believe that we are here to serve all those in Atchison... from our sponsors, staff, board, volunteers, venues, musicians who perform, and the attendees. Each plays a vital and active role in shaping the outcome of our events & productions as well as the collective cultural relevance that is being created.

Values: Musicality, Locality, Sponsorship.

• Musicality & Locality : We work with all local  musicians including local academic institutions, intermediate level and above. We do bring in outside professionals from within the greater Kansas City area  periodically but our primary locus remains with Atchison.

• Sponsorship - We predominantly feel that we are a conduit for cultural relevance for the philanthropic interests who fund us. While we do operate to earn profitability on certain initiatives, we don't anticipate requiring dependency on our donors. We view our donors not as ATM machines with thier hard earned money, but rather as philantropic investors whom we are accountable towards affecting the culturally relevant vitality with which they seek within the Atchison community. We don't just say thanks by word  or recognition , we show our thanks through our actions on our mission & outcomes.

Interested to volunteer ? Have a reference or a question? Please contact us via our contact page.