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Share your Butler Trail and Lady Bird Lake stories with us. You can read submitted Trail user stories from Trailheads on our blog.
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Arts + Culture
The Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail is an important and unique place in the heart of downtown Austin. Due to its natural aesthetic, proximity to the lake in an urban setting, and what it offers the community, it has become a highly personal and beloved space to its users.
In 2022, The Trail Conservancy (TTC) partnered with the Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) and the City of Austin Art in Public Places (AIPP) program to create an Arts + Culture Plan for the Butler Trail that would contribute to the space and elevate the user experience, while not overwhelming, distracting, or complicating the environment. The Arts+Culture Program seeks to embody the voices of many groups while embracing the act of “peacekeeping” in ways that are meaningful.
SENSE OF PLACE: A Public Art Symposium
Austin’s Art in Public Places and The Trail Conservancy are teaming up to host Sense of Place: A Public Art Symposium on Thursday, November 16, at the Seaholm Waterfront Intake Facility. The symposium will explore public art’s role in defining a place – the aesthetics of which create memories and increase the desire to connect with the surrounding environment through multi-sensorial components. The founding partners of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) will provide a keynote address and case study, followed by a panel discussion with some of Austin’s top placemakers.Â
Tickets will go on sale October 5th.
View all the art on the Trail!
The Current Underneath
The Current Underneath was installed inside the former water intake facility of the Seaholm Power Plant, future site of the Seaholm Waterfront Building. The dadaLab team activated one of the intake facility’s massive underground concrete chambers by designing slowly evolving laser-light elements that could be viewed from above and emitted outward from the chamber above the viewer’s heads. The piece paid tribute to the history of the facility by creating liquid effects with the lasers to emulate the water that used to run through it.
Fortlandia - Phoenix Trail
Phoenix Trail is a dynamic fort installation that celebrates regeneration and nature’s resiliency. Inspired by the prescribed burns in the Hill Country Trails area of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Phoenix Trail is about rising from the ashes and starting anew.
Read More about Phoenix Trail and all our Fortlandia Forts here
Common Waters
The Common Waters Demonstration Project celebrates Lady Bird Lake by intersecting art, activism, environment, and community with a collaborative temporary art installation to inform the Trail Conservancy’s Art + Culture Plan. The Common Waters project highlights the beauty and importance of Lady Bird Lake, the heart and common connector behind the Austin community. Artists Rejina Thomas, Ruben Esquivel, and Taylor Davis designed, fabricated, and installed a 10’ x 15’ floating wetland on Lady Bird Lake. These artists have a profound understanding of the history and culture of the minority communities in Austin and have a shared goal of honoring those communities. TTC, an environmental artist, Stacy Levy, and Austin-based curator, Public City, joined with these artists to make this goal a reality.Â
Fortlandia - Star Dome
Star Dome is a large 5-pointed Lone Star, laid over a hemispheric dome. In maps, a star denotes a capital, and Star Dome becomes a visual representation of where the viewer is placed: Austin, TX, the capital of the state.Â
Fortlandia - territories.
Childhood play is so often focused on discovery— the discovery of place, material, and potential creations. This discovery can be found at any scale, alone or with friends, and ultimately fosters imagination and interaction, even with strangers. Our fort aims to tap into this type of play by establishing a series of strategic shelters or territories, which can be continually defined and redefined by the interaction of its occupants.Â
Read More about territories. and all our Fortlandia Forts here
Goals for Arts + Culture Along the Trail
TTC will organize arts and culture projects that will achieve the following artistic outcomes:
- Cultivate a process that allows creation and placement of site-specific art that challenges artists and offers Trail users fresh experiences – environmental, historical, cultural
- Create a sense of place through the cultivate of environmental awareness and the expression of environmental consciousness
- Embrace the connection of the Trail to the world around it – community, city, watershed, ecosystem
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TTC will organize arts and culture projects that will achieve the following community outcomes:
- Acknowledge historical and ongoing inequities that have shaped access to and ideas about public space, open space, and sustainability in Austin
- Promote healing relationships – for communities, individuals, and the land
- Create new meanings for users and expand Austin’s collective memory about the Trail
- Expand people’s connection to the Trail; broaden and deepen the constituency that uses the Trail and sustains it
Learn more about the Arts + Culture Planning Process
The Trail Conservancy convened a Community Brain Trust to advise the Art + Culture Plan. This group, created just for the planning process, worked alongside standing TTC committees that guide arts and culture activities, ecological planning, and project planning. Reflecting various interests of Austinites, the Brain Trust was a committed mix of neighbors, Trail users, equity advocates, cultural anchors, and business and community leaders from districts along the Trail and beyond. The purpose of the Brain Trust was to help shape the engagement strategy in a way that resonates with the Trail’s communities, and to educate the team on the cultural, social, and environmental context of the Trail from a diversity of perspectives.
The Trail Conservancy, in partnership with the Austin Parks and Recreation, will announce community engagement events where new information and updates will be presented to the community.
Arts + Culture is a new focus for the Trail Conservancy.
If you are interested in learning more about getting involved and investing in our Arts + Culture program, contact development@thetrailconservancy.org.
The Trail Conservancy, in partnership with Austin Parks and Recreation, is always looking for community involvement in projects on the Trail. If you’re interested in being a part of this Program, please contact Caitlin Young at caitlin@thetrailconservancy.org.
