Uppsala Municipality showcases its public art

Uppsala, Sweden's fourth-largest city and an old university town north of Stockholm, has more than 9,000 public works of art – in streets and squares, parks, care homes, preschools, schools, libraries and workplaces. Public art belongs to everyone, and with the app, Uppsala Municipality wants to share information and knowledge about the art and Uppsala's cultural history in an accessible way.

Challenge

Uppsala Municipality invests heavily in public art, with more than 9,000 works placed in public spaces, both in the city and in the surrounding countryside. The city also has a rich cultural heritage and lots to tell residents and visitors alike.

A lot of information was already available on the municipality's website, but Uppsala wanted a digital solution for sharing knowledge about the city's public art and telling the story of its cultural history in an accessible way.

It was important to be able to place the works on an interactive digital map and present them in text, audio and film. The solution also had to be adapted to the municipality's visual identity, meet the accessibility requirements for public bodies, and be something they could continue to develop.

Solution

Uppsala knew from the start that a native app was probably the way to go, and so it proved. OnSpotStory's platform is built for exactly the kind of content Uppsala Municipality wanted to share.

The Uppsala konst & kulturarv (Uppsala Art & Heritage) app was launched in May 2022 with eight art walks featuring 77 works of art in total, plus four walks for the "Summer around the Castle 2022" programme. There is also a map of Uppsala and information about the city's public art.

The walks include images, texts, audio, film and quiz questions. Users earn points both for answering correctly and for visiting the actual location of each artwork or information stop.

Since the launch, the content has grown with several new guides about the city's history and new areas of public art.