Hey everyone, I'm Sheila Jenkinson, you're listening to the Growing Small Town Nebraska podcast where my co host Marcie Sextro and I ask community leaders and business owners about their efforts in revitalizing the Cornhusker State. If you love your small town and you're looking for ways to make it even better, or maybe you're interested in what this revitalization movement may mean for your your family, you can join us as we talk with small town Nebraskans who are making our state the definition of "The Good Life."
Hello everyone. I'm Marcie Sextro. We are coming to you from the Intersect Co-working and Incubator podcast booth in downtown Norfolk. Intersect's incubator program helps entrepreneurs from initial goal setting and idea assessment to preparation for a capital race. The incubator program is designed to assist entrepreneurs on an individual basis. The curriculum is a series of modules that provide early stage companies the resources and fundamentals needed in the beginning stages of building a startup business. Find out more on their website intersect coworking.com or follow them on Facebook or Instagram.
Well, it's almost the new year almost 2023 2023.
Wow.
So Marcie, hey, do we have some new year goals? What are we looking at here?
Yeah, so this year in 2023, I have a big goal of being able to revitalize the Heritage Park in Battle Creek before their 150th celebration. And the group that I'm with, I have wonderful group of ladies that we are on a committee together for that and we have a lot of projects to finish before August. And I just wanted to let people know how much joy and how much wonderful things there are about being able to be in a group and help out in your small town and make it a better place to be. So I encourage you that if it's not one of your goals, to really think about doing that this year.
I don't know how many people when I've talked about the podcast and I say your name, they're like, Oh, I'm on that committee with her, or they know of you because of that committee. And it sounds like everybody's working together. Well. And yeah, it's really something special when you do that as a team. Well, for me for goals, I don't know, you know, I love to visit new places. And so I am going to start on my list. I'm a big list person.
Yeah. Me too.
So the first half of the year, I started out with like a whole book of lists. And then it's funny, because the next year I'm like, oh, yeah, I meant to do that I meant to do this. But one of the goals is definitely to visit some new places in Nebraska, we travel a lot. But lots of times, we are going out of state to see different things. And that's fantastic. But I can't wait to find some of those unique places in Nebraska. And if you guys are listening, and you hear this and you think I should come visit your town, I want to know about it. For instance, I didn't know about Taylor, Nebraska. I did visit that with my sister, but it was way too short of a trip. And I want to take my husband back and check out some of the great things in that area, Burwell, Calamus and all those great things. So I would encourage you make your own list of great places that you're going to visit this year within the Cornhusker State.
Well, today, Sheila, we have Angie Stenger with us, the Executive Director of the Growing Together Initiative, part two. I'm really excited to hear about all the other things that she has to say about arts and culture and other projects that we have going on in this area. Let's talk about founders first of all. Can you kind of explain what a founder is? in case somebody doesn't know? And the whole topic of founders and entrepreneurs, what can you do to help them specifically. We know a lot about it, because we were here at that the Intersect Coworking, and we know there's some great programs here. But for people to know like where do they get started? If I have an idea, where do I go? How can I do that in northeast Nebraska?
Well, honestly, I will always send them here to Emma at Intersect Coworking center because, again, not my expertise. Founders mean somebody who's founding a business creating a business. It's the entrepreneurial entrepreneurial ecosystem that we're trying to create in the area. So to do that, whatever the idea is, I mean, I remember a young gal who was in high school had a great idea for an app and this is probably five years ago. And she's like, I don't know where to go. I didn't either. I still don't but now I know who to find. To ask that question and Emma is the best resource. she can then send you on to whether it's a financing issue, if it is an idea of a business plan and working with the Small Business Development Center. And honestly Sourcelink is a website that was created by the University of Nebraska Omaha with the NBDC the Nebraska small business and BDT Nebraska Business Development Center.
There you go.
But Sourcelink is a website that you want to know where to find funding, you want to know how to do a business plan, like you can go in there and it just lists, Growing Together is listed there as a, as a resource. What I'm going to do is connect you with the right people, because I don't have the funding, I don't have any of that. But I have the ability to meet people and put them together. One of my favorite stories was one of the Million Cups, Wednesday morning events here at Intersect was a local gentleman had an idea and he went online to the Y Combinator school and which is basically, I have an idea, here's what it is, and put it out there like this is my idea. But I need help. I'm good at this, this, this and this, but I have no idea how to do this part of it. And they connected him with a person, that person has since moved from New York to live here to help him develop this. So that's a great story. And I had no idea that that was out there that Y Combinator. And so those are the type of things so A come to the Million Cups, because they are just great to learn those things. I come every week, not because I'm starting a business, but I want, and I always take notes, because I want to know what those things are when somebody says and I can go back Oh, he told me it was.
Yeah
So so that is the type of thing that that I will try to help connect you with. But again, if that's some, if you have any interest, any ideas, Emma is the connector, because she knows how Invest can help people and fund them and find the right ways. In sometimes it's going to be well, that's a really small idea. But that's okay, then we're gonna put you maybe with the Small Business Resource Team, which is through City Economic Development Office, maybe it's through the Chamber, maybe it's SCORE, and you just need some ideas, because that founders are usually businesses or idea that's necessarily businesses, some are, but that are going to scale up. There's also people who are just entrepreneurs who want to like I'm starting a new business, not necessarily to make it big enough to sell to somebody. But you have to think of entrepreneurs in two ways. One are those that are creating a business that's going exploding go big one or just creating a small business to meet a need in my community. So it goes both ways. And it has different resources as well.
And that's wonderful just to be able to have that central location of where you can get information no matter what kind of project you're doing, what kind of business you want to start. It's just a wealth of information we now have in northeast Nebraska that we did not have before.
Right, right. I mean, there's always been the University, there's always been Invest Nebraska. But they weren't in Norfolk, they were only in Lincoln. And so it's very exciting that this is their first out state effort, and it came to our town.
Yes. And hopefully it will continue to spread through the whole state because we're and this is a wonderful opportunity for people to know that this is possible, you know, reach out to them if you're in a different part of the state and start that conversation to see if you can get those things in your area as well.
And that is something that we are always about working together. And so I get it, a lot of times from as I've met people in Valentine as I've met people in, in Scottsbluff, or wherever those conversations are, we'll do a zoom meeting. This community reached out to me and said we would love to do, we have a lot of kids that go to Wayne State, do you think Wayne State would do Hometown Scholars like on the concept of like, Hey, you're from here, you're going to Wayne State, you come back and do your internship, specifically as a hometown. We've done that we've talked with Valentine is adding sculpture walk, adding sculptures down the road, those type of conversations, anything we're doing is meant to scale statewide so that we can because if we grow Norfolk we grow Nebraska and if we grow Nebraska, everyone succeeds.
That's right. So let's talk a little bit more about the arts and culture that is going through in the area. So resident artists in town, that's a very exciting thought and program is being able to watch people create that way. You know, not all of them may want us to watch, but some may and that would be really interesting path.
Well, this project started two years ago, the legislature put creative districts into their budget on the theory that if you were you could get funding for a creative district if it was an economic development tool. And so that means when the arts are focus, and then it's creating creative jobs, when it is creating working artists and growing population that you can get money. So we started got a group of about 30 people that we 30 to 40 people that were we invited to attend meetings and hired a facilitator that came in and said, Okay, what are the things you want in your town? What are the creative things that are missing, and it was a fun day, like, we all got post-it notes, and we had to go put them on the wall. These are all the ideas and, and then we had to separate them. And he had to separate them into what are these things like building things. One of them was a downtown restroom, you know
Oh
You know, right now when you're down at the farmers market, and,
There you go.
Or even at one of the concerts if they don't have a porta potty there, you're going to a business, which is not you know, so public restroom. As we're talking that 20 to 29 year old that we're trying to target. Again, the environment is very important, recycling bins, we have trash bins downtown, we don't have recycling bins.
That would be awesome.
That was something that people brought up, then there was this whole movement of live music that we've seen in downtown. And we know that there's lots of requests for practice space, like where can we rent a space to come in and just jam or can come in and record our record record? Can you use the word?
I think it's
Oh, yeah,
I think it's fine.
What are they gonna cost? And so we put together a creative menu. And it came back as a group and I had gone through and scenarios, these are the buildings and this is what we could maybe think they would cost if we wanted an artist in residence living and working downtown, we'd need to rent them a studio, we need to pay them, we need to, probably for coming from out of town provide a place where they could live, things like that. Okay, so we would need that money. And we put it together like a menu like you were sitting down at a restaurant, and then we had everybody rank them. And again, like, remember, there's telling us that we'll probably have two and a half, 250,000 a year is all our budget have? What do we need? Oh, and I forgot the most important one, somebody to coordinate it. Because a lot, a lot of things, we used to have a great ethnic festival downtown.
Yes.
All volunteer run, volunteers get burnout. We need a volunteer that knows art. And without a volunteer, we need a coordinator that knows art and knows how to connect with the artists and residency like that. And so so that's what that was one of the top ones. And so we did this menu, and then everybody ranked and, and from the ranking and the voting we came together with alright these are our top priorities. We have officially been certified as the Riverpoint Creative District, which is that whole downtown density piece that we've talked about, in this area from the river to about 7th-8th street, south to Braasch. Maybe peeking over to Philip a little south to Madison looking to Phillip and a North to Braasch. Actually farther north because we wanted to make sure the library and the Riverpoint and so the all those things happen. And now we have there had to be an administrative partnership that handles this. And so the financial agent is the Norfolk Arts Center, the political agent that is required to be a part of it is the visitors, Norfolk Area Visitors Bureau. And then there's the Growing Together piece just as the third arm. And we have an advisory board. And right now we're applying for grants. So that at the top things that came out that we want to try to do in the first year would be looking at this practice space concept. And this was all created, you know, we've had some supply chain issues. Some inflation issues of some of those numbers have gone up. We want to hire somebody to be that coordinator. We want to get at least one artists in residence going. So these are the things that we are now applying for that grant from Nebraska Arts Council. And that we should be able to get that money and work forward again, we'll always have to remember the idea is to creating more creative jobs, that in five years, they'll be able to say, Oh, we had 140 creative positions downtown, now we have 168 or whatever that number is
Right
I'm making those numbers up.
Yeah.
Album, album, showing my age. And so that so, these went on and things like more festivals, especially festivals, representing the diversity of our community, you know, we have Oktoberfest, there's a Hispanic Heritage Festival has now started in the last few years. But how can we do more? And so these conversations happened and working the artist and seeing more artwork and seeing permanent artwork was all at the table. And it all got created. And we had a couple meetings and then I think it was at one point, I'm like, well, these are all great. Who's paying for it?
But so that's where there's lots of things happening and you'll see little pieces pop up. To me the beauty of art is it's different for everyone. And if you look at our sculpture walk, it is completely different that some are very real, like, oh, I look at that and I know that is a person and others are very representative, abstract. And, you know, that is what I think is the diversity in itself is that we think it's so important to have a little bit of everything.
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Another piece, I'm sorry, I almost forgot that was a very important designation was a welcoming community in the world of diversity and equity and inclusion and that I don't, you know, whatever your your personal beliefs are, know that if we're going to grow our community, we have to be open to everyone. You don't have to be like them
Right.
But you have to welcome them into your community. And we want that message out there that Norfolk is open and welcoming. And so there's going to be you know, some opportunities to do some training, like what's the best way to approach like yes, I am open to you coming in don't feel like I mean, I'll be very honest, somebody says they're like, Oh, but I don't want to go in there because they're very religious, and they will judge me. Well, no, they can be very religious, they're not going to make you be religious.
Right
And on that same note, it goes the other way. Yeah, you know, and so we want to have those conversations so that all communities are welcomed,
That is so important. And here is one of the reasons that that speaks to me when you talk. One of the reasons that I love living here is because the people are friendly, you can talk to everybody. And I hope that that continues. And again, whoever the people are, whatever it is that they're doing, whether I agree with it or not. Hey, I still want to talk to you have those conversations? And you know, and find some kind of common denominator.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's going to be as we see our population grow, there's going to be people from different countries, different communities, different you know, beliefs and that is an important piece that also makes us a great diverse, you know, population. So yeah, I think I think we have that greatness. We just have to share it. So there will be some of that also, within our Creative District planning of like, how could we offer that you could put a sign that says yes all are welcome on your door?
Okay, Angie, our final question for you is, what do you love about living in a small town?
Oh, I have always loved I grew up in a small town smaller than is a town of 8000. And I have loved that you can immerse yourself in everything. I did it as a kid I was my family was involved in the community, involved in our church involved in a little bit of everything. And I think Norfolk is just a bigger small community. And I've been here 22 years and it is just the opportunities are so great to whether you want to be in theater, or whether you want to throw axes or whether you want to learn to golf or you whatever it is you want to do. You can do it here. We have, you know, it's just the the opportunities are endless. And in a big city, you're not going to be able to connect like that. I have some friends who used to live in Lincoln, and they're like, We have a better social life here than we did in Lincoln, because it doesn't take us 25 minutes to drive anywhere.
Right
And we just are connecting not with just our neighborhood but because our neighborhood is the town, so that's what I love.
Well, we so appreciate you coming today and sharing everything with us. And we'll you know I'm hoping to chat with you again next year and let us know how things are go.
Perfect.
All right. Thank you, Angie. To find out more about our podcasts, go to growing small town n e.com and sign up for our newsletter, where you'll be the first to know all the news about the podcast. There's also wonderful coupons on there, and all kinds of other information that you'll find valuable.
We're looking forward to the new year here at Growing Small Town Nebraska podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Don't miss all the great episodes coming up. It's going to be a fantastic new year. We wish you safe and happy holidays.
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