Your public art, in people’s hands
Put every mural, sculpture, and installation in your city into a beautiful guide people actually use.
What your community gets
A map-first guide in every visitor’s browser.
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Opens on a map
Nobody experiences a collection alphabetically. The guide starts on the city itself.
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A page for every artwork
Photos, artist credit, and the story behind each piece.
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Self-guided tours
Curated routes with turn-by-turn navigation, followed at the visitor’s own pace.
What your team gets
Publish, moderate, and archive without a developer in the loop.
- Explore collections management →
Catalog & archive
Museum-grade records for every work, with full export at any time.
- Explore community contributions →
Community contributions
Photo and story submissions land in a moderated queue. Nothing publishes without your approval.
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Publish without a developer
Your team updates artworks, artists, and tours through a simple admin. Changes go live without a ticket.
Live in Calgary
Calgary Arts Development runs the city’s whole collection on Public Art Guide.
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Every city ward — Murals, sculptures, and installations across the whole city.
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Connected to open data — The guide reads City of Calgary open data, so civic geography stays current on its own.
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Found from anywhere — Every artwork has its own page, reachable from search.
Explore the guide the way a visitor would. Then read how it came together.
Read the case studyHow it works
Wherever your collection is, that’s where we start.
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Show us your collection
Book a demo. Bring a spreadsheet, an open-data feed, or nothing but photos.
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We shape the guide around you
Your name, your brand, your domain. We migrate and enrich the records.
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Launch
A map-first guide goes live in every visitor’s browser.
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You publish, we operate
Your team keeps it current. We handle hosting, maintenance, and improvements.
Infrastructure, not campaigns
A one-off build starts dying at launch. We operate every guide we ship: hosting, maintenance, and improvements, for years, not a season.
FAQs
What is Civic Collection?
A map-first guide to your public art collection: every artwork with its photos, story, and artist credit, plus self-guided tours. Designed, built, and operated for you by Built by Field.
Who is it for?
Municipal art programs, BIAs, festivals, campuses, and anyone stewarding a collection of public art.
What does it cost?
No two collections are alike, so we don’t publish a price list. Onboarding is scoped to your collection, and an ongoing subscription covers hosting, support, and improvements.
Do we own our data?
Always. Your catalog is yours, and you can export it in full at any time.
Can the public contribute?
Yes. Photo and story submissions, suggested edits, and proposed works all land in a moderated queue, and nothing publishes without your approval.
How long until we launch?
It depends on your collection and the state of its data. Onboarding is scoped up front, and we do the heavy lifting of migrating and enriching your records. Your team learns the admin in under an hour.
Do we need developers?
No. Editors manage artworks, artists, and tours through a simple admin, no developer in the loop.
Notes from the field
Practical writing on stewarding public art.
How to evaluate public art mapping software
Most programs never run a formal procurement for this. The decision happens in a hallway, on a demo call, or in a budget meeting. Here is what to compare, what each option actually costs, and the one question that decides it.
How to inventory a public art collection
Most programs run on a spreadsheet that quietly drifts out of date. Here is a practical way to turn what you have into a real catalog, one record at a time, without stalling for a year first.
A field guide to writing posts
Every content style the blog supports (headings, lists, figures, quotes, code, and tables), collected in one reference post.