Privacy Policy
We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold for you.
Using personal information allows us to develop a better understanding of our patrons and in turn to provide you with relevant and timely information about the work that we do – both on and off stage. As a charity, it also helps us to engage with potential donors, supporters and report back to our funders.
The purpose of this policy is to give you a clear explanation of how we collect and use information from you directly and from third parties.
We use your information in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information. This policy explains:
- What information we may collect about you
- How we may use that information
- In what situations we may disclose your details to third parties
- Our use of cookies to improve your use of our website
- Information about how we keep your personal information secure, how we maintain it for you and your rights to be able to access it.
- We may make changes to this privacy policy from time to time. The latest privacy policy will always appear on this page.
If you have any queries, please use the contact details listed at the end of this policy.
Northern Stage (Theatrical Productions Ltd) is a charity and is funded by Arts Council England as well as various trusts, foundations and individual donors and supporters. Our registered charity number in England and Wales is 700055 and we are also registered as a company in England and Wales under registration number 2187213.
We collect various types of information in a number of ways:
For example when you register on our website, buy tickets, make a donation, complete a survey or enter a competition, we’ll store personal information you give us such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone number and card details. We’ll also store a record of your purchases and donations.
For example, when you visit our website, we collect information about how you interact with our content and ads. When we send you a mailing we store a record of this, and in the case of emails we keep a record of which ones you have opened and which links you have clicked on.
We occasionally receive information about you from third parties. For example, we may use third party research companies to provide general information about you, compiled using publicly available data.
Data Protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive such as health information, race, religious beliefs and political opinions. We do not normally collect this type of information unless there is a clear reason for doing so. As an example, we collect health information about participants in our workshops and classes to ensure their safety.
There are three bases under which we may process your data:
When you make a purchase from us or make a donation to us, you are entering into a contract with us. In order to perform this contract, we need to process and store your data. For example, we may need to contact you by email or telephone in the case of cancellation for a show, or in the case of problems with your payment.
In certain situations we collect and process your personal information for purposes that are in our legitimate organisational interests. However, we only do this if there is no overriding prejudice to you by using your personal information in this way. We describe below all situations where we may use this basis for processing.
For any situations where the two bases above are not appropriate, we will instead ask for your explicit consent before using your personal information in that specific situation.
We aim to communicate with you about the work we do in ways you find relevant, timely and respectful. To do this, we use data we have stored about you, such as events you have booked in the past, as well as any preferences you may have told us about.
We use our legitimate organisational interest as the basis for communications by post and email. In the case of postal mailings, you may object to receiving these at any time using the contact details at the end of this policy. In the case of email, we will give you an opportunity to opt out of receiving them during your first purchase with us. If you do not opt out, we will provide you with an option to unsubscribe in every email we subsequently send you. Alternatively, you can use the contact details at the end of this policy.
We may also contact you about our work by telephone, however we will always get explicit consent from you before doing this. Please bear in mind that this does not apply to telephone calls we may need to make to you related to your purchases (as above).
In addition to marketing communications, we also process personal information in the following ways that are within our legitimate organisational interests:
We may analyse information we hold about you to ensure that the content and timing of communications we send are as relevant to you as possible.
We may analyse data we hold about you in order to identify and prevent fraud.
In order to improve our website, we may analyse information about how you use it and the content and ads you interact with. We use Google Analytics to do this.
We may use a segmentation model provided by The Audience Agency which uses postcode data to profile you and which helps us understand more about the make-up of our audiences.
We may process personal information to target ads to you on Facebook and Instagram.
We may use profiling techniques or third party insight and wealth screening companies to provide us with information about you that will help us to communicate in a relevant way with you, in particular when we are approaching you about potential philanthropic support. Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you.
In all of the above cases we will always keep your rights and interests at the forefront to ensure that that our processing does not override your own interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. You have the right to object to any of this processing at any time. If you wish to do this, please use the contact details at the end of this policy. Please bear in mind that if you object this may affect our ability to carry out tasks above that are for your benefit.
There are certain circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. These are as follows:
To our own service providers who process data on our behalf and on our instructions (for example our ticketing system software provider Spektrix or a mailing house who post out bulk mailings of our season brochure). In these cases, we require that these third party companies comply strictly with our instructions and with data protection laws, particularly around the security of personal data.
If you’ve booked for Spring 23’s If You Fall and given explicit consent, we will share your details with the producing company, Ad Infinitum.
Cookies are small text files that are automatically placed on your device by some websites you visit. They are widely used to allow a website to function (for example to keep track of your basket) as well as to provide operators with information on how the site is being used.
We use cookies to keep track of your basket as well as to identify how the website is being used and what improvements we can make.
If you use your debit or credit card to purchase from us or to make a donation, we will ensure that this is carried out securely and in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Standard (PCI-DSS). You can find more information about this standard here.
We optionally allow you to store your card details for use in a future transaction. This is carried out in compliance with PCI-DSS and in a way where none of our staff members are able to see your full card number. We never store your 3 or 4 digit security code.
If you have signed up to pay for a membership and pay by direct debit, your card details are securely stored by a third party provider, Gocardless and none of our staff members are able to see your full card details. You can find out more about Gocardless here.
We occasionally take photographs of performances, audiences and participants for monitoring and marketing purposes.
We ask for explicit consent before taking and using photographs when:
- It is for an activity that participants have specifically enrolled for, such as a holiday workshop or course. We ask for consent as part of the enrolment process
- Where vulnerable children or adults are involved.
- Where school children are involved, with permission being sought via the school.
When we wish to take photographs of audiences, be that watching a performance or mingling in our theatre, we make them aware of the fact by displaying visible notices. If an individual does not wish to be photographed they are encouraged to tell the photographer or a member of staff.
We store your personal information indefinitely such that for any subsequent purchases you make we are able to link them back to a single unique record that we hold for you on our system.
If there are aspects of your record that are inaccurate or you would like to remove, you can usually do this by logging into your account through our website. Alternatively, please use the contact details at the end of this policy.
Periodically, we may contact you to check that the personal data we hold is still accurate.
Any objections you make to the processing of your data will be stored against your record on our system so that we can comply with your requests.
We will put into place appropriate safeguards (both in terms of our procedures and the technology we use) to keep your personal information as secure as possible. We will ensure any third parties we use for processing your personal information are the same.
We will not transfer, process or store your data anywhere that is outside of the European Economic Area.
You have a right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in this data corrected. Please fill in a Subject Access Request form if you wish to exercise this right and send it to the contact provided at the end of this policy. Please note that we will want to confirm your identity for security reasons.
If you are applying for a job then you can view our Job Applicant Privacy Notice.
Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about any aspect of this privacy policy, and in particular, if you would like to object to any of the processing of your personal information that we carry out for our legitimate organisational interests.
Write to us at: Data Protection Team, Northern Stage, Barras Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RH