Omaha Mobile Stage lifts up local performing artists and builds community.
In 2021, as a response to the pandemic, the Omaha Mobile Stage (OMS) project transformed a repurposed 18-foot box truck into an accessible, adaptable and easily transportable stage.
Today, OMS is a metro-wide venue and tourist attraction that provides community-driven entertainment and arts enrichment.
Free public events increase public safety, vibrancy and connection, and economic and social wellbeing for residents and businesses. Our events are free and open to the public. Events are co-produced with neighborhoods, schools, arts organizations, and national and local artists and creatives.
2023 Season Highlights
30 events in the Omaha metro
Provided free arts enrichment and entertainment to more than 12,400 visitors
Hosted more than 215 unique performances that featured more than 50 individual adult performers and more than 230 individual youth performers
Paid over $135,500 directly to Creative Industry workers, including event planners and managers, designers, audio engineers, stagehands, and professional artist stipends
OMS Programs
Creative Placemaking Program, which provides financial and production support for local performing artists and event organizers who work in low and moderate-income outdoor public spaces
Workforce Development Program, which provides paid internships for aspiring stagehands and audio engineers
Sliding-Scale Rental Program, which provides the general public with equitable access to a state-of-the-art mobile stage venue with professional audio and lighting equipment and event production services
Youth Talent Show Program, which relaunched Omaha’s beloved and historic Show Wagon series as a metro-wide youth performance competition for ages 3-19
Why Give Now?
Your support provides a critical foundation for the OMS project to be fully realized, adding value and vibrancy to the city we love.
OMS is a community-led initiative and creative placemaking project. Season 3 will run from April through October 2024.
OMS events entertain thousands of residents and visitors annually. These events help establish safe outdoor community spaces. These gatherings also increase the vibrancy, connection, and economic and social wellbeing for residents and businesses along the metro’s historic and revitalizing main streets and park systems.
We overcome common challenges to increasing access to the arts and creating arts-based gatherings in neighborhood public spaces. These challenges include prohibitive ticket costs, limited arts funding to neighborhood-led initiatives, and lack of transportation to traditional venues.
In 2024, the OMS Youth Talent Show series, a free talent show competition for youth ages 3-19, will take place at preliminary events throughout the metro, including Dance Night and Battle of the Bands, and a Finals Night in downtown Omaha. We are proud to re-establish the metro-wide legacy of Omaha’s Goodfellows Show Wagon, a former City of Omaha program that ran for nearly 60 years starting in the 1950s.
Omaha Mobile Stage is managed by Partners for Livable Omaha, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the educational and charitable support of the live performing arts (PLO Tax ID: 85-4187964).
All donations are tax deductible.
For more information on donations or sponsorship, contact Jessica Scheuerman, Executive Director, Partners for Livable Omaha, jscheuerman@livable.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
How was the stage designed?
The designbuild phase began in 2021 and is led by a collaboration between Jessica Scheuerman of Partners for Livable Omaha; Professor Jeffrey L. Day, FAIA of the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and director of FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team); Actual Architecture Company; Omaha-based theatrical designer and technical director Brendan Greene-Walsh; and Jerry Reif Jr. at Nebraska Innovation Studio.
How does OMS fit into Omaha’s creative landscape?
By working in partnership, OMS elevates and amplifies the work of local performing artists.
Why focus on neighborhoods?
Arts and culture give voice to the value of diversity. They are central in binding and mending the social fabric. When neighborhoods program their own entertainment—and welcome outsiders in—they build upon their cultural assets and grow their local economies.
Elevating community voices and strengthening neighborhood cohesion are fundamental values. OMS mobilizes arts and cultural resources to build, heal and celebrate community.
What are sliding-scale rentals?
The OMS rentals operate on a sliding scale to support local artists and communities that would otherwise go without production resources.
To inquire about Omaha Mobile Stage rentals or future opportunities to support neighborhood-based arts or economic development activities, please contact oms@livable.org