Themes
Recognizing Historic Significance and Value
Making visible and revealing the value of cultural landscapes lies at the heart of TCLF’s work. Too often landscapes die quiet deaths because they’re not seen and therefore not valued. For the past 25 years TCLF has been passionately dedicated to increasing visibility through its education and advocacy initiatives.
Improving Stewardship Commitment
Engendering a stewardship ethic is one way to counteract one of the most pernicious and widespread challenges associated with cultural landscapes: deferred maintenance. By consistently bringing visibility to and a deeper understanding of at-risk landscapes, TCLF has helped create a foundation for appreciation, public engagement, and community pride.
Increasing Park and Open Space Equity
Parks and public open spaces that were originally designed primarily for respite and passive enjoyment are increasingly under pressure to generate revenue, whether through private commercial development in urban settings, or through resource extraction in national monuments and wilderness areas. Coalitions and public support as well as government intervention have been key to protecting these cultural landscapes.
Revealing Cultural Lifeways
Landscapes are palimpsests that can contain the remnants of myriad cultures, often spanning multiple generations. The legacy of these cultural lifeways is often lost through incompatible or insensitive development. Here, as elsewhere, coalitions and public support have been key to protecting these cultural landscapes and revealing their ethnographic values.
Avoiding and Reversing Erasure
Establishing and advancing the dominance of one culture over another through erasure has been a tactic of war, colonization, and oppression for most of human history, and it has supported an American narrative for centuries. Cultural landscapes have the unique ability to help us reveal eradicated, hidden, and lesser-known stories.
Amplifying Community Voices
Authentic public engagement is the foundational bedrock that informs design, interpretation, and stewardship of cultural landscapes. TCLF has consistently and purposefully formed partnerships and sought to amplify community voices – whether of residents, neighbors, members, and/or descendants – providing them with a wider platform and a larger audience than they may otherwise have had.