| Our Role | Data science team hired by Vancouver Travel and Tourism |
| Target Audience | Tourists visiting Vancouver. |
| Secondary Audience | Vancouver locals who enjoy art, other artists hoping to be inspired |
Public art is an important aspect of any city as it reflects the culture, history, and values of a community. Vancouver is known for its vibrant and diverse arts scene, and as a result, it has a plethora of public art installations that locals and tourists can explore. However, apart from some well-known museums that gather art collections together, with so many public art installations scattered throughout the city, it can be difficult for tourists to find the art they are interested in. As a result, we want to provide tourists with a centralized location to find information on public art in Vancouver.
Our VanArt dashboard provides a comprehensive and interactive dashboard that allows tourists to easily find the public art they are interested in. By providing information on the location, the year of installation, etc. our dashboard will not only help tourists find the public art they are looking for but also provide context and background on each installation. Additionally, VanArt can serve as a tool to promote public art and encourage people to explore Vancouver. Overall, VanArt has the potential to enhance the experience of tourists visiting Vancouver by providing them with a unique and enriching way to explore the city's public art. Although geared towards tourists, VanArt can be used by anyone interested in the Vancouver public art scene; locals who would like to explore their city’s public art are welcome to and encouraged to use VanArt.
The data set we used to create this app is modified from the City of Vancouver Open Data Portal.
We'll be using a dataset that contains information on roughly 470 public artworks in Vancouver, with each artwork having 11 features/variables. These variables are described below:
Title of Work: the title of the artworkType: the type of art (mural, statue, etc.)Status: whether this art is in place or deaccessionedSiteAddress: address of artworkNeighbourhood: neighbourhood where the work is locatedgeo_point_2d: latitude and longitude of the artworkPhotoURL: the photo URLURL: url with artwork informationDescriptionOfWork: brief introduction to the artworkYearOfInstallation: the year artwork was installed
Some research questions that our project tackles are described below:
- Where can I find publicly displayed art in Vancouver? Which neighbourhoods have the most publicly displayed art?
- Which artists have art displayed across Vancouver?
- What types (e.g. murals, statues) of public art are there in different neighbourhoods in Vancouver?
- What type of art is most abundant in Vancouver?
An example usage scenario of our dashboard by a tourist is as follows:
Imagine you’re a tourist visiting different parts of the world in search of art that speaks to your soul. In your travels, you finally reach the beautiful city of Vancouver. Being the art fiend you are, you quickly exhaust all the art museums and galleries but your craving for art is still not satiated. Since you’re a proper tourist, you wander the streets in hopes of discovering public art that will quench this thirst for art. However, this is a laborious effort and you wish there were a tool that could guide you to these public art pieces. This is where VanArt comes in.
VanArt is a dashboard that guides the user to various public artworks located in Vancouver. Specifically, VanArt displays the map of Vancouver and geographically shows the locations of the aforementioned public art pieces, and the corresponding number of art pieces belonging to a specific location.
Wherever these art pieces exist in Vancouver, they would have a corresponding geographic bubble with the number of art pieces which can allow tourists to plan their travels accordingly. For example, Downtown would have a bubble with a large number (compared to UBC, for example) corresponding to the number of art pieces. Clicking on these bubbles zooms into the location until the desired art piece is reached. Upon clicking the art piece, the dashboard will show vital information regarding the piece, such as the title of the work, the website where it can be found, and the physical location of the piece. Our dashboard also gives finer control to the tourist. There exist dropdowns, sliders, and checkboxes that allow the tourist to select various options for the art pieces, such as: the year installed, the type of art, and the neighbourhood. These options give the tourist more control and convenience regarding where they should travel and look for the art pieces. Depending on these selected options, our dashboard also shows statistics such as bar plots and a tree plot. By default, the main leaflet map shows all public artworks in Vancouver, and different map types for this map can be toggled as well, such as satellite view.
Ultimately, the usage scenarios of our dashboard are immense. Everyone can use this dashboard, not just tourists, to discover public art in Vancouver. A gif of our app in action can be found here.
