Wichita’s 150th birthday was in 2020 and people and organizations around the city participated with special safely-distanced celebrations (here and here and here, among others) and there was even a documentary.
And can we just call it what it is? A sesquicentennial!! A word as fun to pronounce as it is to spell.
In July, Wichita’s PBS affiliate, KPTS Channel 8, premiered the documentary KEEPER 150. It was an excellent local show – I really enjoyed watching it!
In the hour-long video, KPTS multimedia journalist Chris Frank documented the story behind the latest installments of Wichita’s Keepers on Parade and how they became part of Wichita’s birthday celebration.
He interviewed local artists who worked on the Keeper 150 project by applying their artistic abilities to 10-foot versions of the iconic Keeper of the Plains sculpture by Blackbear Bosin. Each artist’s Keeper reflects the area where it was being installed as well as the personality and style of the artist who worked on it.
After watching it, I thought it would be a really fun family activity to try to find all of the Wichita Keepers on Parade. I have no idea (at the moment) who keeps track of all the locations of the mini-Keepers, but when I find out you’ll be the first to know! EDITED: Found them! Together Wichita has a super-convenient map with 35 Keepers on Parade locations. What a fun challenge it would be to visit all 35 – except that some of them are inside the lobbies of businesses, so maybe finding the ones outside is a better idea. 🙂
Related:
Where to find Wichita murals
FREE local coloring pages with Wichita and Kansas themes
3 Responses
I just clicked on the food deals and the post for brunch was from 2018. I new person in town would be really lost with this list and maybe there are no brunches since Covid 19. I love this publication and recommend it to others. Hope you have some one that can update your linked information.
Yes, it’s really hard to keep information updated during this time! Thanks for pointing out the older information; we always do our best to keep it updated but as you noted, this post hasn’t gotten the attention it needs for a couple of years. The main reason, of course, is that brunches aren’t as cheap as the other deals that we post about.
We do update our restaurant deals regularly though. If you’d like to see more current deals (not including brunches), check out the Restaurant Deals category here.
Thank you.