The Mission
of the Missouri River Cultural Conservancy is to
document, record, archive and foster awareness
of the unique history and culture
of the Central Missouri River Region.

Inspired by a uniquely diverse artistic and cultural community, primarily the singer/songwriters of the Central Missouri River Region, Jerome Wheeler conceived an idea to use state of the art audio and video recording techniques to document and foster awareness of this community. At the first meeting, called in December 2004, Jerome stated: "we share the same conviction that the cultural identity of this area is closely tied to and in some cases defined by the music that is composed and played here. Songwriters have had their share of successes on the national front but many, many more have chosen to remain close to home and continue writing about what they know and care about, mainly the people of this area, the River and Missouri. Even then, you can't keep good songs down and several musicians among them, Bob Dyer, Cathy Barton and Dave Para, Ken Shepard, Lee Ruth, and myself have all achieved a level of national and regional prominence and yet still are closely identified within that prominence as being Missouri musicians…we would like to take the songwriters in this area, unknowns as well as knowns, and use them in a project that would put that identity in a video-tape/DVD archive for historical and cultural purposes. The clock is running out on many of our local treasures and we are afraid that, if we don't act quickly, several songwriters will be beyond our reach." Jerome's words were all too prophetic as he died two months later, before this new project could obtain the equipment or expertise to record any of his creative genius. Within a few months the loss of "local treasures" Forrest Rose and Ken Shepard further demonstrated the need for this project. Then Bob Dyer died in April 2007, but thanks to the efforts of MoRivCC, Bob was recorded on several occasions and his memory will be saved as part of the MoRivCC archive. The original vision of recording singer/songwriters has expanded to include all types of art, including dance, poetry, storytelling, photography, sketching, and painting, which reflect the unique culture, skills, and interests of the people of the Central Missouri River Region.