Plain terms for an open project

Who we are

PublicArtMap is run by Cultural Commons CIC, a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee, registered in Scotland (SC837397), registered office 1 Hope Park Crescent, Edinburgh EH8 9NA. The site is free to use, carries no advertising, and does not sell images, prints or data.

Using the site

Browse, link to and reuse the catalogue freely under the terms on our licensing page. Please don't use the site unlawfully, misrepresent who you are, attempt to break or overload it, or scrape it in a way that degrades it for others. We may suspend accounts that do.

Contributing

Contributor accounts are invitation-based. Everything you submit — new works, corrections, photographs — is reviewed by an editor before it appears publicly, and we may edit, decline or later remove contributions.

You keep the copyright in what you contribute. By submitting, you grant us and the public a licence to use it under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0), with credit to you. You confirm that what you submit is yours to share — your own photograph, or material already carrying a compatible open licence. Never upload images taken from search engines, news sites or social media.

Because that licence lets others reuse your contribution, it can't be withdrawn for copies already made. We will always remove your material from this site on request.

Photographs of artworks & copyright

A photograph of a public artwork can involve two separate copyrights: the photographer's, and the artist's in the work itself.

In the UK, section 62 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ("freedom of panorama") permits photographs of sculptures, buildings and works of artistic craftsmanship that are permanently in a public place. It does not cover two-dimensional works such as murals — so a photograph of a mural may engage the artist's copyright even when the photographer has licensed their own image freely.

We therefore treat 2-D works differently: their photographs are only published once the artist is credited, and every such page carries a direct link for the artist or rights-holder to ask us to take the image down. We publish in good faith to help people discover and credit public art, and we remove material promptly when asked.

Takedown & corrections

If you are an artist, photographer, estate or other rights-holder and want material removed, email rights@publicartmap.co.uk with a link to the page. Please tell us which material you mean and confirm that you hold the rights — we keep this deliberately light.

We aim to respond within 72 hours, and will remove or hide the material while any genuine question is open. If you'd rather we kept the entry but changed the credit, or used a different photograph, tell us — we would usually prefer that too. Factual corrections are welcome at the same address.

Accuracy & availability

Much of the catalogue is assembled automatically from open sources, so it will contain errors and gaps. It's offered as-is, without warranty: please don't rely on it where accuracy matters — check the cited source. Public art also moves, weathers and disappears, and locations may be approximate. We can't guarantee the site is always available.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or anything else that can't be limited by law.

Your data

We hold only what we need to run contributor accounts. See the privacy notice for the detail, including how to get your data or close your account.

Changes & governing law

We may update these terms as the project grows; the date above shows the last revision, and material changes will be flagged to contributors. These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the Scottish courts have jurisdiction.