Very likely, Austinites with childhood memories of the city's Yule Fest in the late 1960s, which over the years became the 1.2-mile Trail of Lights, thought they'd bring their children and grandchildren back to Zilker Park for many years — until budget constraints forced the city to suspend the annual outdoor celebration in 2009.
This spring, however, RunTex founder Paul Carrozza [6] announced that he had signed a contract with the city to bring back the Trail of Lights. In this article, Carrozza tells Forefront how the Trail of Lights embodies what he calls the Austin Experience — and why it's about much more than twinkling lights.
Forefront: Why is it important to you to restore the Trail of Lights as an annual outdoor event?
Paul Carrozza [6]: The thing that really differentiates Austin is that we are a city within a park. No matter where you are in Austin, you are in close proximity to physical elements — lakes, trails, parks — that connect you to health and to each other. Everyone can connect to some element of health, individual or social. We have a common culture with health and positive energy right at the center. The Trail of Lights is a tradition that sits right at the center of that. I want to bring that tradition back for the health and vitality of Austin.
FF: We've already discussed your mission to get people out of air conditioning and away from fluorescent lights to improve individual health [8]. How does that extend to social health?
PC: The first step is getting people outside and engaged in activities that create positive energy and improve their personal lives.
The physical elements that bring us together, as well as the events we hold in the parks, create neutral platforms for social connections. When we come together for healthy activities, whether it's a run or a music or sporting event, we are creating experiences that forge a common culture. Then we can get together to share positive activities outside an event for positive energy. These events allow us to have interactions separate from the polarizing questions of politics or religion.
The positive energy we create in a run or when listening to music or eating at a restaurant spills over. Austin has so many events where we can come together for individual health, but that wind up connecting us.
FF: How do we see that positive energy, as you call it, manifest itself in our daily lives?
PC: We can see it because we can see the culture of being social and helpful is alive and well in Austin. Giving back makes us feel better and reminds us that, at a basic level, we need to serve each other, whether that’s as a coach, helping others gain skills, or as an athlete, participating in charity runs, or as a volunteer, delivering services.
We have a very rich environment to support events that give back to the city. It’s a run for us, but by having a philanthropic aspect, we are giving that energy directly to others. We’re aligning ourselves around creating something new. We have a culture connected by abundance and growth, rather than by scarcity.
FF: It’s that common culture of connection that many Austinites are afraid we will lose as we grow. We used to be connected by our counter-cultural attitude — “being weird” — how do we maintain that connection as the city grows?
PC: Austin has really grown up in the last 20 years and looks dramatically different. But we need to remember that the tremendous vertical growth stems directly from the horizontal connections within our community.
Our hometown heroes who now have global impact — Michael Dell [9], Lance Armstrong [10], John Mackey [11] — came out of those horizontal connections. As they have grown, the horizontal connections through city events and activities.
It’s those connections that have allowed us to maintain that small-town feel with global impact. We can’t all be connected directly to each other, but the opportunities for shared positive experiences abound and are celebrated.
As things grew vertically, we still had great horizontal connections across sectors and activities. In addition to the world-class events, smaller non-profits and individual companies put on their own 5Ks, building those connections and shared purposes through non-work, non-political, non-religious activities.
So we have shared memories and shared experiences in the music scene, the arts, technology and endurance sports — Austin is unique in how many we have. There are lots of shared experiences that are on people’s bucket lists that they can reach out to. It’s part of the culture of our town to do these things. It’s accepted and expected. I call it the Austin Experience.
We need to keep the attitude that we want to connect through helpfulness and shared purpose, to keep growing and producing more of the social revenue. A lot of people who come to Austin come to connect with the Austin Experience.
FF: There are a lot of people who probably feel they are not able to celebrate or connect with that experience, due to poverty, homelessness or illness.
PC: Those are exactly the people we want to extend this experience to. I see that as a problem of not everyone having found their purpose and gained the capacity to pursue that purpose. How can we extend that sense of purpose to education, to improving our quality of life, our immediate surroundings and our ability to prosper?
The basic challenge we have is to extend the desire and capacity to find a shared purpose. I’m trying to create the tools and structures that will bring together motivated people with a shared purpose. We’re part of the same city, but not everyone has found their purpose. What can we do to extend that?
The citizens of Austin have lots of energy to look around us and help others, to build more and more connections to extend that shared purpose. We need to make sure we are spreading that attitude and cultivating the Austin Experience.
FF: Is that why you decided to bring back the Trail of Lights for Austin?
PC: Exactly. The Trail of Lights embodies everything we need to do to cultivate the Austin Experience. The holidays are a time when people are celebrating, bringing families together in multiple generations. The Trail is an open platform, there is no barrier to entry. It connects long-time Austinites to newcomers, creating memories that connect in a powerful way. Even the willingness and support for bringing the Trail of Lights back show the energy of Austinites.
And this year we want to extend this powerful shared experience — translate the energy of embracing Austin — into really improving our community. The Trail is a destination for 250,000 people to share in the Austin Experience.
Our goal is to create an experiential learning experience, in which people go through what they consider is a party, that cultivates a great feeling, and they learn something. The Trail’s neutral platform allows positive energy there, as well as sowing the seeds for that positive feeling to extend. At the end of the day, Austin will move toward being even more connected.
FF: All thanks to some twinkling lights.
PC: Yes. Non-fluorescent, twinkling lights.