Press Releases

The Cultural Landscape Foundation Launches New Website

Media Contact: Nord Wennerstrom | T: 202.483.0553  | M: 202.225.7076 | E: nord@tclf.org

Washington, D.C. (May 24, 2016) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today launched its new website, mission statement, and tagline – “connecting people to places” – which have all been in development for more than a year. The new website provides a fresh, visually compelling user experience, while showcasing North America’s remarkably rich and diverse cultural landscape legacy. The design also offers easier navigation and greater interaction with TCLF’s broad array of programs and initiatives. The core of the website remains the ever-growing What’s Out There database, the authoritative online repository of North America’s cultural landscapes, landscape architects, and related practitioners, which now boasts more than 1,800 sites, 900 biographical profiles, and 10,000 images.

“Our goal was to create a well-designed, visually rich site that fully complements the depth and breadth of TCLF’s content,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF’s president and CEO.  “While there are a few kinks to work out and more content to migrate, we’re very proud of the new site, and eager to share it and get user feedback.”

The new website offers an enhanced user-friendly experience. Its content is organized around four major themes:

  1. Places – including information about the different types of cultural landscapes; the What’s Out There database; and interactive online city and regional guides; 
  2. People – links to the Pioneers database of landscape architects and allied professionals; Pioneers Oral Histories, richly edited first-person video recollections with significant practitioners; and Stewardship Stories, which highlight inspiring individuals whose work, passion, or advocacy has made a positive impact on our rich legacy of cultural landscapes;
  3. Stewardship – contains TCLF’s Landslide list of threatened and at-risk landscapes and landscape features; the annual Landslide thematic compendiums and associated exhibitions; and an opportunity to nominate a site to the Landslide list;
  4. Events – featuring Garden Dialogues, intimate tours with landscape architects and their clients of mostly residential projects; exhibitions, including traveling photographic exhibitions associated with Landslide (such as The New American Garden: The Landscape Architecture of Oehme, van Sweden and The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley); What’s Out There Weekends of free, expert-led tours in cities throughout North America; as well as lectures, book signings and other events.

TCLF’s website serves many users, including landscape architects and allied professionals, heritage travelers, scholars, students, and many others. Google Analytics reveals strong concentrations of users in locations with university-based landscape architecture programs. The Pioneers video oral histories are particularly valuable to students and scholars, because they are primary-source material for conducting research.

The new website was developed by Freeflow Digital, a strategic technology firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and Eugene, OR, which focuses on non-profit organizations and educational institutions. Philadelphia-based Oviatt Media, a firm with which TCLF has worked since the foundation’s inception, managed the art direction. 

“Our projects are partnerships,” said Freeflow Principal Evan Parker. “We wanted to work with TCLF because we believe in their mission and want to support their work.”

The new tagline—“connecting people to places”—and mission statement are the result of extensive internal and external polling and careful data-driven analysis. The new mission statement reads: “A non-profit established in 1998, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) connects people to places. TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards.”

TCLF Stewardship Council Member David Calle and Board Member Brian Thomson were instrumental in organizing, conducting, and analyzing numerous in-person and online user surveys and polling, and were active in all aspects of the process.  

About The Cultural Landscape Foundation:
A non-profit established in 1998, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) connects people to places. TCLF educates and engages the public to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards.

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