Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of Urban Gallery (“the app”), operated by Back Room Strategies Ltd (“we,” “us”). By installing or using the app, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the app.

What Urban Gallery is

Urban Gallery helps you discover public art — sculptures, murals, installations, monuments — in the cities it covers. Today that includes 200+ cities across 80+ countries, sourced from each city’s open public-art dataset (where one exists), OpenStreetMap contributors worldwide, photos from Wikimedia Commons via Wikidata, and pieces submitted in the field by Patrons. The app aggregates these records and displays them on a map with context about each piece.

The gallery is meant to be free to walk. We do not include pieces that require paying admission to view (gardens, zoos, museum interiors, theater interiors). We may include pieces that are free to view but located inside buildings with limited hours (public buildings, library lobbies, government buildings); where we do, we surface the access constraints on the piece’s detail page.

The app is provided as-is and as-available, with no guarantee of uptime, accuracy, or fitness for any particular purpose. Data comes from public sources and Patron contributions and may be incomplete, out of date, or incorrect. If a piece has been relocated or removed, we may not know.

Accounts (optional)

You can use most of Urban Gallery without an account. Sign-in is optional and only needed to (a) save tours that follow you across devices, and (b) verify a Patron purchase.

If you choose to sign in, you do so with an email address; we send a one-tap “magic link” you click to authenticate. There is no password to manage. You can sign out at any time, and you can email us at seth@backroomstrategies.com to delete your account, your saved tours, and your purchase records.

Saved tours

When you save a tour, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive license to store the tour data on our servers and display it back to you when you sign in on this or any other device. We do not view, share, or use the contents of individual users’ saved tours for any other purpose. Saved tours are deleted when you delete the tour or when you delete your account.

Patron subscription

Patron is a recurring subscription processed through Google Play Billing. Two base plans are available: monthly ($4.99 USD per month) and annual ($39.99 USD per year, roughly 33% off the monthly rate). Both plans auto-renew at the end of each billing period until cancelled. Becoming a Patron:

• Removes ads from the app for your account.
• Lifts the saved-tours cap. Free-tier users can save up to 2 tours; Patrons are unlimited.
• Unlocks the in-app contributor flow for adding pieces to the gallery from the field (see Submitting pieces, below).
• Grants early access to new categories as we add them (architecture, history, and whatever comes next).

Patron benefits remain active as long as your subscription is current. If you sign in on a different device with the same Google account, your Patron benefits follow.

Cancellation. You can cancel your Patron subscription at any time from the Google Play app or at play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions. Cancelling stops future renewals; you keep Patron benefits through the end of the current billing period.

Refunds.Google Play handles all refund eligibility under their published refund policy. We honor any refund Google Play approves; once a refund processes, your account reverts to the free tier and Patron benefits stop. We are not separately able to refund a payment outside of Google Play’s flow.

Founding Patron pricing is offered to the first 100 annual subscribers as a thank-you for early support. Founding-rate annual Patrons pay $24.99 USD for their first year; subsequent renewals are at the standard annual rate ($39.99/year). Once 100 founding-rate sign-ups have been counted, the offer ends and new annual subscribers begin at the standard rate. Founding pricing is not retroactive and not transferable.

Submitting pieces

Patrons can add pieces to the gallery by being physically present at the piece, taking a fresh photo with the camera, and confirming the location and metadata. Pieces submitted this way are published immediately and become part of the public gallery for all users.

By submitting a piece, you confirm and agree to the following:

• You took the photo.You confirm that the photo you submit is one you yourself captured, at the time of submission, at the location of the piece. You do not submit photos taken by others, photos pulled from the internet, or photos of pieces you weren’t physically at.
• You grant Urban Gallery a license to use the photo and metadata you submit. Specifically, a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive license to display, store, and distribute the photo and the metadata (title, artist, description, location, byline) inside the app and on associated marketing surfaces (e.g. the website). You retain ownership of the photo; you can ask us to remove it at any time, after which we won’t continue distributing it.
• You credit your contribution under the byline you choose. Your chosen byline is shown publicly on each piece you submit. You can change your byline in Settings → Preferences; future submissions will use the new byline. Past submissions keep the byline they were submitted under unless you ask us to update them.
• The piece is suitable.The piece is permanently or semi-permanently installed in a place where the public can see it without paying admission. You don’t submit private art, art on private property without owner permission, art inside paid-admission venues, or photos of children or other people that would not normally be considered acceptable to share publicly.
• No people in the photo (when avoidable). Frame the piece so that no individual person is the subject of the photo. Incidental passers-by are unavoidable in some places; do not deliberately photograph people.
• No defamatory or harmful content.Don’t use the title, description, or byline fields to harass, dox, or defame any person, including the artist or others associated with the piece.

We may remove submissions at our discretion if we believe they violate these Terms or otherwise compromise the quality or safety of the gallery. If we remove a submission you made, we’ll let you know. Patterns of submission abuse may result in suspension of your contributor privileges or your account.

Ads

Free-tier users see banner ads served by Google AdMob. We do not control the specific ads shown; ad selection is handled by Google’s ad-serving infrastructure, subject to Google’s content policies. We filter for sensitive ad categories where Google’s controls allow but cannot guarantee a specific ad will or will not appear. Becoming a Patron removes ads entirely; the AdMob SDK is not even loaded for Patron accounts.

Acceptable use

You may use the app for personal, non-commercial purposes. You may not:

• Scrape, extract, or re-host our database in bulk for commercial purposes. The underlying city datasets and OpenStreetMap data are publicly licensed — you’re welcome to source them directly from those publishers under their terms.
• Reverse-engineer the app to bypass rate limits, authentication, the saved-tours cap, or the Patron-pass purchase flow.
• Use multiple Google Play accounts to obtain Founding Patron pricing more than once.
• Use the app to harass, stalk, or endanger anyone, including artists whose work is featured.
• Submit pieces from locations you weren’t physically at, photos you didn’t take, or photos that include children or other identifiable people you don’t have consent from.
• Use the byline field to impersonate another contributor, the artist, or any other person.
• Impersonate us or falsely claim affiliation with us.

Content and intellectual property

Artwork records (title, artist, description, location) are sourced from:

• Each city’s public open-data portal where one exists. Most commonly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0 or 4.0).
• OpenStreetMap contributors worldwide. Licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL).
• Wikimedia Commons via Wikidata, primarily as a photo source. Each photo carries its own license (commonly CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC0, or PDM); we display the photographer credit and license alongside the photo, with a link back to the Commons file page.
• Patron contributions. Photos and metadata that Patrons have submitted under the Submitting pieces license above.

Per-city attributions are listed in the Settings → Datasection of the app. The app displays this data under each source’s respective license.

The artworks themselves — the sculptures, murals, and installations in the physical world — are generally protected by the copyright of the artist or rights-holder, even when they are displayed in public space. Viewing them from a public place is unrestricted. Publishing photographs of them commercially may require additional permission from the artist.

If you’re an artist

If you are the artist or legal rights-holder of a piece displayed in the app and would like it removed:

• Tap Report this artworkat the bottom of any artwork’s detail page, which opens a pre-filled email to us, or
• Email seth@backroomstrategies.com directly with the artwork’s title, your name, and the reason for removal.

We will act on good-faith takedown requests from artists or rights-holders within a reasonable time, typically within one week.

External links

When you tap Directions, the app opens your device’s native maps application. When you tap See photos, it opens Google Image Search. These services are outside our control; their own terms apply. We are not responsible for the content or availability of third-party services.

Disclaimers

The app is provided “as-is.” We make no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of your use of the app, including loss of saved tours, loss of Patron benefits due to refund or account closure, or anything that happens at the physical location of an artwork.

Your use of the app at physical locations is at your own risk. Public art is sometimes located along busy streets, in construction zones, or in areas that may be unsafe at certain times. Use reasonable judgment when navigating to and around pieces.

Termination

You can stop using the app at any time by uninstalling it. You can delete your account by emailing us. We may suspend or terminate access if you violate these Terms; in that case, any unused Patron benefits are forfeited and we are not separately able to refund (refund eligibility is handled by Google Play).

Changes to these Terms

If we change these Terms, we’ll update the “Last updated” date above and note what changed in the Settings tab of the app. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email seth@backroomstrategies.com.