OFlovesU team honored with "Kultur- und Kreativpiloten Deutschland 2011" award

In 2009, Loimi Brautmann, a student at the Offenbach University of Art and Design, developed the first tours through Offenbach as part of the project "If I can do it here, I can do it everywhere" with Prof. Heiner Blum. The student's aim is to convey life in the city beyond the classic postcard motifs. The focus of his tours is not on classicism, Art Nouveau or the Wilhelminian style, but on the urban diversity in the backyards, niches and different milieus.

"Impossible symbioses" have been created in the process and are absolutely desired by the initiator of the tours: "When the hand cheese trader from the weekly market stops off with the student during a guided tour of the city's clubs to listen to live Turkish music at the Kurdish pub, this is more than just a successful bridge-building exercise," Brautmann explains his project. In addition, he has found his "playground" in Offenbach: the city is in a state of upheaval, is not only architecturally full of contrasts and is home to many nations and cultures. "To tease out the city's own character and be open to discovery," is how he describes his approach.

His observations have led to tours with different focuses: "Who stays awake when everyone is asleep?", "Design from the Backyard", a "Reli Ralley" or the now legendary "Food Culture Tour", where visitors can make all kinds of culinary discoveries. From the Turkish backyard bakery, the small Italian cheese dairy, the Polish nightclub, the mosque, the police drunk tank or the fashion labels in the Heyne factory - under the umbrella brand "OFlovesU", Loimi Brautmann and his team take visitors deep into the finest ramifications of the city.

A different kind of city marketing: after an initial test phase, the Office for Public Relations added the unusual tours to its official program at the beginning of 2010. Together with Mathias Müller, Head of the Offenbach am Main Public Relations Office, Loimi Brautmann developed the tours to their current form.

The tours are a concept by Loimi Brautmann, whose field of work is projects at the interface of media, society and the city. In recent months, projects such as the community web platform "Like Offenbach" with its own presence in the social networks have been developed to accompany the OFlovesU city tours.

Design elements also play an important role: stickers, bags and postcards - in short, the "Like Offenbach" brand - have been created in recent months. "A thousand OFlovesU jute bags were sold in 2010 alone," reports Marina Kampka. And designer Briggi Holtermann, who, like the HfG student, is part of Loimi Brautmann's team, adds: "It's great that your own city is proudly worn on your shoulder as an everyday item."

In the meantime, the temporary use of rooms has been added to the team's activities: on the occasion of the Rhine-Main Architecture Summer, the project management of "Besser leben in Offenbach", a joint campaign of the City of Offenbach and Stadtwerke Offenbach Holding, had initially rented the rooms of the former bakery in the main station until the end of September. Since then, Loimi Brautmann has turned this "after-work lounge" into a meeting place under the name "Achtzehn:52". The program was convincing and it was therefore decided to continue the project until the end of the year.