Dreamland Festival is the vision of Tulsa artist, entrepreneur and community leader Steph Simon. Established in 2016 as World Culture Music Festival, the festival was renamed in reference to Williams Dreamland Theater in 2022. The festival is the largest hip-hop-focused festival in the heartland; an annual celebration of music, art and film that takes place in downtown Tulsa. Steph Simon has been featured in Rolling Stone, New Yorker, NPR and more.

For the film festival, Simon formed a partnership with Tulsa entrepreneur Kolby Ari’s film organization, also called Dreamland. At the Woody Guthrie Center. Dreamland Festival’s name is a reference to the Williams Dreamland Theater, one of many businesses destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.