Public art deserves to be found.

Civic Collection exists to close the gap between the art cities have and the art people find.

The mission

Cities, campuses, and cultural organizations invest deeply in public art: commissions, festivals, community projects, decades of collecting. Then the works go quiet. Not physically: the plaques weather, the PDF maps go stale, and pieces that anchor a neighbourhood turn invisible to the people walking past them.

We think that’s a solvable problem. Our mission is to put every public art collection into people’s hands: to make the art easy to find and explore, to give artists the credit and visibility their work deserves, and to let communities see their own creativity reflected back at them.

What we believe

  • Discovery starts on a map

    Nobody experiences a collection alphabetically. People ask what’s near them, what the story is, and what’s ten more minutes down the path, so every guide we publish opens on a map, with the catalog a tap away.

  • The collection belongs to its stewards

    Your team publishes and updates the guide themselves, and the catalog is yours, exportable in full, at any time. We build and operate the platform; we don’t hold your collection hostage.

  • Guides are infrastructure, not campaigns

    A public art guide should outlive its launch announcement. We operate every guide we build (hosted, maintained, and kept current), so it’s still working for your community years from now.

Where it started

The first guide on the platform, the Calgary Public Art Guide, launched in 2025, commissioned by Calgary Arts Development to make the city’s public art, from large-scale murals to community-led projects, discoverable in every ward. It’s live today, and it set the pattern for everything the platform does. Read the case study.

Who’s behind it

Civic Collection is designed, built, and operated by Built by Field, a product studio that partners with civic and cultural organizations on thoughtful, durable digital products. When you work with Civic Collection, that’s who you’re working with. The people who design the platform are the same people who help bring your collection onto it.