Contributor guide
Everything you need to help map public art
Welcome. This is the working handbook for PublicArtMap contributors — how to sign in, what you can do, how to source photographs, and the few standards that keep the map trustworthy and freely reusable.
Getting started
Contribution is invite-only while we map the first cities. This guide is open to anyone — read it before you decide whether to put your name forward. If you haven’t been set up yet, express interest and we’ll take it from there; everything below still describes the work accurately. This page covers the rules and the rights; for what every button does, see how to use the app.
If you have been invited, getting in takes a moment:
- Sign in. Go to Sign in and enter the email address you were invited with. We’ll send a one-time link — there’s no password to remember.
- Open the link from your inbox on the same device. It signs you in and lands you on your dashboard.
- Set your display name. On the dashboard, add the name you’d like your contributions credited under. You can change it any time.
If the email isn’t recognised, your invite may be under a different address — reply to your invitation, or express interest and we’ll set you up.
What you can do
Your account has one of three roles. Everyone can suggest edits; the rest unlock as you take on more.
Suggest corrections and additions to any published work. Every suggestion is reviewed by an editor and credited to you.
Everything a member can do, plus review the photo queue for your city — approving, replacing and sourcing openly-licensed images.
Full editorial tools: moderate images anywhere, edit and publish works, and apply or decline suggested edits.
Improving records
The quickest way to help is to fix what you see. On any work’s page, use “Suggest an edit” to propose a change — a corrected date, a better attribution, a fuller description, the materials, the exact location.
- Open the work from the map or a city page.
- Choose Suggest an edit, change only the fields you’re confident about, and add a short note explaining your source.
- Submit. Your suggestion joins the review queue as pending; you can track it on your dashboard.
An editor reviews each suggestion and either applies it or explains why not. Nothing you suggest changes the live record until it’s approved, so there’s no harm in proposing a fix you’re unsure about — flag the uncertainty in your note.
Adding a work
Found a statue, mural, memorial or piece of street art that isn’t on the map? If you’re a contributor for a city, your dashboard has an “Add a work” button. You’ll give it a title, say what kind of work it is, set its location, and add a photo.
- Location — on your phone at the work, “Use my location” is the quickest; otherwise enter the coordinates or nearest address.
- Photo — your own photograph, or one you’re free to share (see licensing below). It’s reviewed before it appears.
- The artist — name them in the description; an editor links them properly on review.
Everything you add is saved as a draft for review, so don’t worry about getting every field perfect — an editor checks it before it goes live, and you can follow its progress on your dashboard.
Temporary & vanished works. Street art and pop-up installations don’t always last. Tick Temporary when you add something that may not — and if a work you know later disappears, open its page and mark it “no longer here”. It stays on the map as a faded record of what was once there, rather than vanishing without trace. Marked it too soon, or has it reappeared? Set it back to present just as easily.
Reviewing & adding photos
If you’re a contributor for a city, your dashboard shows a Photo review queue. It gathers works in your city that are missing a photo, plus any images awaiting a decision.
- Approve or reject a pending photo — is it the right work, in focus, and openly licensed?
- Add a photo to a work that has none by pasting a Wikimedia Commons file or image URL; we resolve the credit and licence for you.
- Replace a poor photo with a better one, and set which image leads the page.
Approved photos go live immediately, credited to you. Your remit is your own city — that keeps review local to the people who know the works.
Photographs & licensing
PublicArtMap is open data, so every photograph has to be one we — and anyone reusing the map — are free to use. A photo is usable if it carries one of these:
| Licence | What it means |
|---|---|
| CC0 | Public-domain dedication — no rights reserved. |
| CC BY | Free to reuse with credit to the photographer. |
| CC BY-SA | Reuse with credit, sharing derivatives alike. |
| Public domain | Old enough, or released, to carry no copyright. |
The simplest source is Wikimedia Commons, where every file states its licence and photographer. Geograph is another good well of CC BY-SA photographs of British places. Your own photographs are welcome too — by adding them you agree to share them under CC BY-SA, with credit to you.
Murals & the two-copyright rule
A photograph of public art can involve two copyrights: the photographer’s, and the artist’s in the work itself. UK law (freedom of panorama) lets us publish photos of three-dimensional works permanently in public — statues, monuments, fountains — however they’re framed. It does not cover two-dimensional works: murals and mosaics.
So for a mural or mosaic, an openly licensed photo isn’t enough on its own — the photographer can license their shot, but not the muralist’s artwork. Two things follow when you’re reviewing:
- We don’t publish photographs of them at all by default. A mural or mosaic is recorded, mapped and described, but shows no photograph unless the artist has given us permission. Approving a photo in the queue doesn’t override that — the work’s rights state does.
- Credit the artist first. The queue won’t let you approve a mural or mosaic photo until that work has an artist recorded. If you don’t know who painted it, find out before approving — that’s the point of the rule, not a bug.
- Permission is worth asking for. Many muralists are glad to be shown. One email to the artist turns a record-only entry into a photographed one, and we log the permission against the work. See the rights page.
- Takedown requests are acted on within 48 hours — two working days — and we take material down first where there’s any genuine question.
Widening the shot doesn’t change this — what matters is whether the artwork is the subject of the photo, not how much of the street is in frame.
Editorial standards
A few principles keep the map accurate, trustworthy and reusable.
Add facts you can stand behind, and cite a source where you can — a plaque, a council record, a monograph, a reliable site. If you’re unsure, say so in the note rather than guessing.
Let the work and its history speak. Avoid promotional language, opinion dressed as fact, or florid description. A good record reads like a catalogue entry, not a review.
Upload photographs you took yourself, or that already carry an open licence (see below). Never upload an image you found on a search engine or social media — that’s almost always someone’s reserved copyright.
Public art can be personal and political. Be accurate and fair about living artists, and flag anything sensitive — a contested memorial, a private grief, a work a community would rather not see mapped — rather than publishing over it.
We map works in public space: sculpture, murals, memorials, monuments, statues, plaques, fountains and the like. Shopfronts, signage and private interiors aren’t in scope.
How review & credit work
Everything a member suggests is reviewed before it goes live; photos you approve as a city contributor publish straight away under your remit. Either way, your work is credited to your display name — on the image, and in the record’s history. Editors may leave a note explaining a decision, which you’ll see on your dashboard.
The catalogue is released under CC BY-SA 4.0, and photographs keep their own licences. That means your contributions stay open for teachers, researchers, walkers and other maps to build on — which is rather the point.
Getting help
Stuck, unsure whether something belongs, or spotted a problem the tools don’t cover? Email contribute@publicartmap.co.uk — we’d far rather answer a question than have a record go wrong. And if it's the buttons rather than the principles you're after, the how-to guide walks the app screen by screen.
Head to your dashboard to review photos and track your suggestions.
PublicArtMap is a project of Cultural Commons CIC, supporting open cultural infrastructure.