Some artworks we can show. Some we can only record.

The short version

We publish photographs of solid works permanently sited somewhere the public can reach — statues, monuments, fountains, carved panels. We do not publish photographs of murals, mosaics and other flat works, or of anything temporary, unless we get the rights holder's permission. We also don't include any work that you need a ticket to see.

Where we can't publish a photograph, we still keep the record. The title, artist, date and location are facts, and recording a fact is not reproducing an artwork. Those pages say “No photograph — this work is still in copyright and we don't have the artist's permission to picture it.”

Why the line falls there

Section 62 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows photographs of certain artworks in public without the artist's permission. It has two conditions and both have to hold:

1. The kind of work. Buildings, sculptures, models for buildings and works of artistic craftsmanship are covered. Graphic works are not — and a mural is a graphic work no matter how large or how public the wall.
2. Where it is. It must be permanently situated in a public place, or in premises open to the public. A sculpture in a library foyer qualifies; a sculpture in an office reception does not. A festival commission that comes down in September is not permanently situated, however public it was.

A photographer's own licence to the photo of the work doesn't change this. Someone can licence their photograph generously and still not be able to give away the artist's rights to the artwork that it shows.

How we decide, work by work

In two passes, and we will tell you which one a work has had. The first is a rule applied to the whole city at once: a work typed as a statue, sculpture, memorial, monument or fountain is treated as three-dimensional and its photographs are shown — unless its name says it is a plaque, a window, a mural or a painting, which the rule leaves for a person to look at; a work typed as a mural or mosaic is treated as a graphic work and held back. Anything that the rule cannot identify is left unresolved, and an unresolved work shows no photograph.

That first pass is done remotely, and cannot see everything. The first pass reads an artwork's type from imported data. It does not know whether the sculpture in a courtyard is reachable by the public, or whether the memorial came down last year. As it stands, every assessed work in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling and Inverness has been assessed only remotely — by this rule, or by a person at a desk where the rule could not decide. Each page the rule decided says so, and invites anyone standing in front of the work to correct it.

The second pass is done by somebody in the physical location of the work. A contributor at the work answers three plain questions — is it a solid object, is it there permanently, can anyone reach it — and a definite answer replaces the rule's. Answering “not sure” is a valid answer: the visit is recorded and the work stays as it was, so a photograph already cleared by the first pass stays, and a work nobody has cleared still shows none. This is the work we are building the contributor programme for. Until a work has had a physical confirmation, treat what you see as a reasonable guess.

If you are the artist and you're happy for us to show it

We would love to work with artists to show their work, free and for public benefit, and it takes one email. Permission from you overrides the default, and we record it against the work so it isn't lost.

Give permission for your work

You can withdraw it later. We are not asking you to licence anything, transfer anything, or grant anything exclusive — only to say we may show a photograph of your work to help complete our commons of public art.

If you want something taken down

Tell us and we will take it down. You do not need to prove anything, quote legislation or involve a solicitor. We keep this deliberately light because a rights holder should not have to fight to be heard.

Ask us to take something down

We respond within 48 hours — two working days — and where there is any genuine question we take the photograph down first and discuss it afterwards. You can also ask us to simply correct a credit or amend a record. Just get in touch.

The record stays. A photograph is a reproduction of your work; the record is a description of it — title, date, where it stands — and describing a thing is not copying it. So we can take a photograph down, correct a credit, or fix something we have got wrong, but we will not delete the entry, any more than a library would withdraw a catalogue card. If it is your name you would rather we did not show, that is a fair question and a different one; write to us and we will talk it through rather than apply a rule to it.

If you appear in a photograph

That is a different right and it is yours regardless of who owns the artwork or the photograph. If you are identifiable in an image on this site and would rather not be, ask us to remove it at the same address and we will, on the same two working days. You do not have to give a reason.

The privacy notice sets out how we handle personal data more generally.

Getting it wrong

This is a small volunteer project and we will sometimes misjudge a work. The design errs towards not publishing: a work nobody has assessed shows nothing, and a contributor who thinks we have got one wrong can correct it on the spot without waiting for anyone's approval. If you spot a mistake, rights@publicartmap.co.uk reaches our monitored inbox.