91.5 FM KIOS Omaha Public Radio Invites Everyone into The Studios to Help Record, Tour, and Enjoy Open Omaha!

The following program was previously recorded. It's time for another episode of Live and Local from the studios at 33rd and Burt. I'm your local host, Mike Hogan. Thank you for joining me today. You ever heard of Open Omaha? This is a lot of fun. It's a free community-wide open house. It features dozens of local businesses and landmarks and sacred sites, creative spaces. Oh, yeah, by the way, K-IOS FM. also involved, a chance to come on down to the studios and see where the magic happens. And here to talk about Open Omaha is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Omaha by Design. It's Brooklyn Larimore. Brooklyn, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you, Mike. Fifth annual Open Omaha, can you believe we've already put together five of these? No, actually not. I can't believe it. What is Open Omaha? Yeah, so Open Omaha is spread across 50 venues. It's built for all ages and completely free to attend, even if the venue typically has a paywall. But Open Omaha just invites you to step inside the spaces that make Omaha unique. So from historic landmarks and local businesses to the creative hubs and hidden gyms, this open house day gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the places, project, and stories that really shape our city. get to go to these different places and you just get to walk in and, in essence, get kind of a tour, not only front of house, but sometimes back of house as to how things work. Correct. So, Dave, you can expect to be greeted at each venue by staff and volunteers. And you expect to learn something more about your community that day. So some venues, they will have guided tours like the Food Bank for the Heartland and Cordia Energy. Others will have hands-on demonstrations. You can see artists at hot shops. And others will simply offer you a preview of just beautiful stoic spaces you might have always wondered about while driving by. What does it take for Omaha by design to put this together every year? How does that work? Yeah, it takes just a lot of time and a lot of passion. Our staff, we typically spend about half the year planning for Open Omaha to ensure that the venues that we select are different each year and have a wide range that they are in areas like pockets around Omaha so they're easy to get to. So basically on Saturday August 8th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., there are all these different places that are open for people to come visit. In fact, there's an entire list of them at Omaha bydesign.org where folks can go out and you can see everybody who's on there. But don't you have a couple of tools that people can use in order to kind of help organize which places they want to go to on this year's event? Yes, we definitely do. So you can start planning your Open Omaha Day now by downloading our Open Omaha app. I mean, find it on Apple and Android stores. Then you can plan your day ahead of time. You can read details of each venue, which includes accessibility and programming, and also start mapping your routes. You can see where the closest bus route or bicycle station is as well. And you can use it the day of to navigate, check in at each venue, and virtually stamp your Open Omaha Passports.

Yeah, that's the part I like the best, where you kind of get to collect these different things. So folks who did it last year, they know the stamps they got. So maybe you come back to some of the same places like K-IOSFM, for example, because you had a great time there. Or maybe you say, you know what, I want to go to places I didn't go to last year and get those stamps, right? Mm-hmm. Correct. And so far, nobody has stamped every single venue on Open Omaha. So if that is your goal, you can be the first to do it this year. Wow, that would be a load, wouldn't it? How many venues are there this year so far? There are 50. 50 places to go that you'd have to hit from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wow. How much fun is this for you? It's a lot of fun for me. My first open Omaha was last year and I was started at Omaha Design. I was there for about two weeks, but it really was a crash course into what we do at Omaha by design and just getting to explore the city in that way that I personally hadn't yet was was a blast. Are you aware of or have you collected any demographics on favorite places? And just because you're on the show with me now, I don't want you to feel any pressure to say that K-IOSFM is the favorite visit of all visitors, but... Yes, well, I will say... KOS is a fan favorite because of your hands-on experience you all offer there. But each year, since the venues do change, it's kind of a new favorite every year. I know previous years, like Lawrence and Gardens has participated, and it was a fan favorite. Central High School is a fan favorite getting to tour that beautiful high school. So it really just kind of depends, but we try to keep it different so people can't explore new places each year. It is August 8th. That is a Saturday, 10 a.m. 24 p.m. Omaha by design.org. You can go there and get the information on everybody who is participating in this year's Open Omaha Festivities. She is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Omaha by Design. Her name is Brooklyn Larimore. Brooklyn, thank you so much for taking the time and opening up the city for tours. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me. And if you liked what you heard and like to volunteer for Open Omaha to help attendees navigate their way around venues, you may sign up by visiting Omaha by design.org slash open Omaha.