River Music Experience is celebrating its fifth birthday today. Honestly, sometimes it feels like 10.

The downtown Davenport attraction has covered a lot of ground since its 2004 opening as an interactive audio-visual museum. We’ve been cheerleading almost every step of the way, certain RME could impact the entire Quad-Cities, but sometimes wondering how.

Now it’s becoming apparent.

RME begins its sixth year firmly established as an incubator, creating musicians and performers and fostering deeper appreciation of various musical forms.

Today at 3 p.m., for example, Songwriters in the Round convenes to share original music. This group anchored monthly performances at RME, where members were inspired to partner with a child advocacy organization and write songs with and about the victims of child abuse.

On Sunday, Nate Lawrence’s Polyrhythms continues its amazing jazz series that brings in nationally known artists for casual Sunday evening shows, preceded by up-close-and-personal workshops.

Terry Hansen’s monthly drum circles have been drawing Quad-Citians for most of RME’s existence.

The Times Go & Do live sessions created a video archive of 46 local performers at the RME.

RME provides a home for Bucktown Revue Web radio show. Rock Camps mold individual teens into bands and put them on RME stages. An affiliation with West Music is providing instrument instruction in the very same second floor spot that once held silent exhibits. The Sound Lab @ RME provides recording instruction on the latest digital equipment.

This all happens independently from the RME’s biggest draw, the Redstone Room, which hosts many performers who never included the Quad-Cities on a tour schedule. The Redstone drives the revenue to help sustain RME. And the performances certainly inspire. But professional performance now seems secondary to RME’s clear mission.

After five years, RME seems focused on developing musicians, songwriters and performers and deeply influencing a Quad-City music scene that didn’t exist five years ago.