The Bush Theatre is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold about you. It’s your information and we respect that. We also want to maintain the trust and confidence of every one of our audience members and supporters, as well as each visitor who uses the Bush Theatre website.

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 and supporters.

The purpose of this policy is to give you a clear explanation about how we and all of our subsidiaries collect your personal information from you directly and from third parties, how we use it and how we keep it secure.

We ensure that all of our activities that involve your personal data are carried out lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.

This policy explains:

• How to keep your data accurate
• Who we are (our legal details)
• How we may collect information about you
• What information we may collect about you
• How and why we may use that information
• How we use your data in relation to Fundraising
• In what situations we may disclose your details to third parties
• Information about how we keep your personal information secure
• Information about how long we maintain it for
• Information about your rights to be able to access it
• How we review and update this policy

If you have any queries about this policy, please email: [email protected]

Last updated: 02.08.24

Accuracy

We do request that any information that you give us is kept accurate and up to date. You can amend your details in the following ways:

• Directly within your online account (log in here)
• By email: [email protected]
• By phone: 020 8743 5050
• By visiting us in person at the Bush Theatre

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Who are we?

The Bush Theatre is a charity and is funded by Arts Council England as well as various trusts, foundations and individual donors and supporters. Our trading name is Alternative Theatre Company Limited. Our registered charity number in England and Wales is 270080 and we are also registered as a company in England and Wales under registration number 01221968.

The Bush Theatre operates the subsidiary Bush Theatre Productions Limited (09343516) registered in England and Wales and the subsidiary Bush Theatre Trading Limited (02899516) registered in England and Wales. All data processed by the subsidiary companies is controlled by Alternative Theatre Company Limited.

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How do we collect your personal information?

We collect your information when you interact with us in the following ways:

From you directly

Most of the information about you we get from you directly, usually in the course of you purchasing something from us (like a ticket), by joining one of our marketing lists, applying for one of our work opportunities, or giving us feedback. We collect data directly from you when you:

• Purchase tickets, gift vouchers or playtexts
• Join one of our membership schemes
• Make a donation
• Sign up to our marketing lists
• Apply for one of our work opportunities
• Respond to one of our surveys
• Raise a query or give us feedback

This may happen via our website, over the phone, or in person.

From your use of our services

When you use our services we record details of this and the outcome, for example we retain a record of the things you have purchased from us, any donations you’ve made, and any memberships you may have had. We collect data about your use of our services when you:

• Visit our website
• Purchase something from us (via our website, over the phone, or in person)
• Join one of our membership schemes (via our website, over the phone, or in person)
• Make a donation (via our website, over the phone, or in person)
• Sign up to our marketing lists
• Respond to one of our surveys

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From third parties

We may be given information about you by third parties that you have given your information to; for example if you purchase interval drinks via our app provider, see one of our shows on tour, book through a ticket agent, or make a donation to us through a donation portal. You should check the Privacy Policy of the third party to fully understand how they will use your data and how it will be shared with us. These are the ways that a third party may give your data to us:

• Our shows elsewhere
  If you watch any of our shows elsewhere, for instance on the West End or on tour, the hosting venue may ask if you are happy for your details to be passed on to us. If they do send the data to us we will contact you within 30 days to let you know it’s been given to us.
• Ticket Agents
  If you book a ticket to one of our shows via a ticket agent they will pass on some of your details to us so we can process your order and identify you should you have a query. We will not use these details for any marketing or fundraising communications unless we have your consent directly from you.
• Fundraising sites
  If you donate to us by using fundraising sites such as JustGiving they may also pass on some of your details to us.
• From public sources
  We will sometimes use data from publicly published sources and combine this with what we already know about you. We will only do this in relation to our fundraising activity, and only in order to ensure that any fundraising approaches that we make are appropriate to what we believe is within your inclination and capacity to donate. Our fundraising processes are consistent with the Fundraising Regulator’s Code Of Fundraising Practice. The sources that we may use will be publicly available and can usually be found through search engines like Google. Examples of the types of information we may be able to obtain
  • Your biography on your employer’s website
  • Information published in mainstream media
  • Publicly published donor lists from other charities/arts organisations
  • Information from sources like Companies House or The Charities Commission.

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What types of information do we collect?

We only collect information that’s necessary to carry out our business, provide the particular service you’ve requested and to keep you informed. There are occasions when you can choose not to give us certain information, but this for example, may limit the level of personalisation we offer, e.g. you may not get to hear about an event you would have loved to have attended.

The type of information we collect depends on how you engage with us.

Your name, contact details and requirements

When you create an account with us, register on our website or purchase tickets or other items from us online, by post or phone we need to collect information from you in order to provide the service you are requesting.

We may collect:

• Prefix and full name
• Gender
• Email address
• Date of Birth
• Contact phone number(s)
• Payment card details. Please note, we will not hold payment information for any longer than it takes to process your transaction.
• Delivery address(es)
• Billing address
• Bank details for direct debit instructions
• Access requirements
• Dietary requirements (for fundraising and press events only)
• Contact preferences
• Home address (for project participants only)
• Job and work experience information

This is not an exhaustive list and we may retain different types of information for different individuals based on the service we are providing.

Your interests / preferences

Our systems retain the history of the shows you have purchased tickets for, the types of show you tend to purchase, membership history, and any projects you may have participated in or supported. If you interact with us on social media, those platforms may give us details of your interests and preferences – you should check their Privacy Policies for details of what they share with us.

Your interactions with us

We may retain any correspondence that we get from you, whether that’s in the post or via electronic means such as email. We may also make a note of any conversations we have with you, either in person or over the phone – in particular in relation to any queries or feedback. If you give us consent to send you email for marketing or fundraising purposes we will note if you open these emails, or click any links within them. We do this in order to assess the effectiveness of our emails. If you respond to one of our surveys we will note that you responded – but your survey responses will not be linked to you as an individual.

These are the types of interactions that we record on our systems:

• When you use our website:
  • The public IP address of the internet connection you are using to access our website (including geographic location)
  • The type of device you use to view our website (e.g., PC, mobile, its screen size, browser information, etc.)
  • Which pages you visit on our site (e.g., which show details you have looked at)
  • How much time you spend on each page and on our site in total
  • If you have an account on our system and login, your email address
• When purchasing a ticket:
  • Show name
  • Show venue (e.g. Holloway Theatre, Studio)
  • Show genre (e.g. new writing, romance, comedy, community)
  • Type of ticket purchased (e.g. concession, discount, group)
• When attending an event:
  • Details of your attendance
• If you have given us your consent to send marketing or fundraising emails:
  • Which emails you have received
  • If you opened the email, when, and on what type of device (e.g. PC, mobile)
  • Which links (if any) in the email you click

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Why do we collect your personal information and what do we do with it?

To provide a service to you

The main reasons we collect information are to provide a service you have requested, to keep you up to date with news and events, to personalise your communications, or to contact you if we need to obtain or provide additional information (e.g. cast changes, travel disruption). The information we collect about our audiences helps us understand how we can best meet their needs. It also enables us to fundraise effectively because we are a charity.  For further information, see the below section.

Specifically, we use the information we collect from you in the following ways.

To carry out our business and to provide a service or carry out a contract with you to:

• Fulfil ticket, merchandise, donation and membership requests.
• Invite you to events or book corporate workshops as per your membership or sponsorship benefits.
• Process payments. Please note that the Bush Theatre does not store any Credit Card or other payment information once the transaction has been completed.
• Provide you with the best customer service at the theatre or by phone and to help us with internal administration.
• Contact you with important information relating to your booking or purchase, such as confirming your order, reminding you of an upcoming performance you’ve booked for or letting you know about cast changes, travel disruption or changes to event times that may affect your visit.

Where we have your consent:

• Keep you up-to-date with productions, news, offers and events, products and information.
• Let you know about opportunities to support our work. You can tailor your preferences at any time by logging into the website and visiting Your Account
• Let you know about upcoming community projects.
• Share your details with other arts organisations whose work you may have seen at or in collaboration with the Bush Theatre. These organisations should contact you to let you know how they collected your data and to check that you’re still happy to hear from them. You will always be able to opt out of their communications by contacting them directly.

Where we have a legal obligation to:

• Use CCTV recording equipment in and around our premises for monitoring and security purposes.
• Detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Where we have legitimate interest to:

• Keep track of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information that is relevant to you.
• Help us target our marketing communications so that they’re more relevant to you.
• For classifying our audiences into groups or segments, using information from bookings, digital interactions and publicly available information. These segments help us to understand our audience better and ensure we’re delivering a relevant offer. We use the third party processor, Audience Finder, to do this. We also submit these anonymously as part of reporting to fundraising and public funding bodies (such as Arts Council England).
• Participate in the Illuminate or Audience Finder initiatives or other initiatives as required by our Arts Council England NPO funding. This initiative builds an aggregate picture of local and national audiences across all Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisations. Their tools allow us to understand how our audience in a local and national context and helps us to identify new audience opportunities.
• Audience Finder also allows us to classify our audiences into groups or segments, using information from bookings and digital interactions, and publicly available information. These segments help us to understand our audience better and ensure we’re delivering a relevant offer. We also submit these anonymously as part of reporting to fundraising and public funding bodies (such as Arts Council England).
• Measure and understand how our audiences respond to a variety of marketing activity so we can ensure our activity is well targeted, relevant and effective.
• Undertake audience research: we may contact you to ask you to participate in research either via an online or telephone survey or in person. Participation in research is entirely voluntary, so you can choose whether or not to disclose any information requested. We will make it clear whether your response to surveys is anonymous or not and, should you provide any further information, the Bush Theatre will inform you how it will be used. In some instances, your anonymous responses may be shared with co-producers of the events you have purchased tickets for. We will clearly notify you of this when we send you the survey. We will not share your anonymous responses with any other third parties.
• Analyse and continually improve the services we offer including our artistic programme, our website and our other products.
• Help us run the test version of our website that we use internally to pilot new features and ensure the smooth running of our web services.
• To keep our database accurate and relevant, for example, using National Change of Address.

Processing applications for work opportunities

If you apply to one of our vacancies via BreatheHR, this is the data that we will use:

• Your email address
• Your postal address
• Your telephone number
• Your preferred title/honorific (Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms/Dr/Mx)
• Your first name, last name, and any middle names/initials
• Any other data entered by you on a form or page

We also collect information in order to better inform our teams about prospective donors, to fulfil our fundraising goals as a charity. This is to ensure we are providing appropriate opportunities for people to support our work, should this form of engagement be of interest.

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How we use your data in relation to Fundraising

We are a registered charity and we rely on charitable support. We consequently encourage support from individuals, companies and foundations who want to help us achieve our mission and reach the widest possible audience.

We are committed to fundraising best practice and abide by the Fundraising Regulator’s key principles and behaviours of a fundraising organisation: to be legal, open, honest and respectful. We undertake to comply with relevant law and regulations, including the Proceeds of Crime Act, Data Protection, Tax and Gift Aid legislation and Charity Commission guidance.

Every year, we need to raise approximately one third of our income from fundraising activity including individual donors, charitable trusts, public grants and corporate support to deliver our work. To do so, we aim to better understand both our audience’s engagement with the Bush to ascertain any potential interest in supporting us further, and to identify potential future audiences and prospect individual, corporate and trust and foundation supporters through specific research.

We do this in a number of ways:

• Current audiences
  • We will seek additional information about a small number of our audiences, including booking patterns, individual connections, business network information and publicly available information relating to: residential location, wealth and assets, family (not including information about children unless given personally or made public by the individual concerned), career, donations to other organisations (including political parties where they are made public by the individual), hobbies and interests to create a profile of their interests and preferences.
  • This helps us understand the background and interests of the people who are currently engaging with our work and may subsequently choose to support us, enabling us to make appropriate invitations and requests for donations to those who may be able and willing to give. We may also use publicly sourced information and images to help identify individuals who attend our special events, and we may send information about upcoming events, workshops, talks and other invitations, if we believe these may be of interest.
• Current supporters
  • We will continue to contact all individual supporters as per the benefits of their engagement with us with specific fundraising email communications, or email invitations. We will always endeavour to tell them about the aspects of our work that we think are most relevant to their interests, including ways to support our artistic program, our artist development schemes and the work in our community.
  • Our aim is to always to ensure our communications to our supporters are personal, relevant and timely, and designed to provide the most rewarding engagement with our work. Our donors tell us that tailored and relevant communication is a priority for them – we consistently review this (through methods such as asking for feedback and occasional telephone campaigns) to try and make sure we’re getting this right.
• Prospect research
  • We will use research from a number of different publicly available sources to identify potential supporters and their interests in addition to those of our current supporters, aiding us in our fundraising activities. This may include newspaper websites and archives, housing market websites and the electoral roll as well as official websites of companies, charities and other arts organisations. In addition to this research we also make use of company, director and shareholder information from publicly available, officially registered information providers.
  • If we have identified a specific company or trust and foundation through this research that we believe may be interested in supporting our work, we may contact the people specifically connected to these bodies via publicly available contact information, such as a relevant work email address. If we identify an individual, we may contact them via phone or by post. As a charity, we believe that this in the legitimate interest of our fundraising needs. We will always ensure we conduct an appropriate legitimate interest assessment to ensure that we are not infringing on your rights.
  • The Development Department monitors potential donations and corporate partnerships for compliance and risk. Final decisions may be escalated to the Board of Trustees. It is our Board’s responsibility to act in the best long-term interest of the Bush Theatre and to act prudently when deciding to accept or refuse voluntary contributions. The Board will refuse a gift if it can reasonably conclude that its acceptance would be more likely to be detrimental to the organisation than its refusal.

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Who do we share your information with?

The Bush Theatre will never share, sell, rent or trade your personal information to any third parties for marketing purposes without your prior consent. We will ask for your consent to share personal information with organisations we have co-produced work with whose shows you will have seen here at the Bush Theatre or in collaboration with us at another venue.

If you would like to unsubscribe from the mailing lists of any of the third parties you have previously agreed to share your information with you can contact them directly.

We use a number of data processors in order to help us provide the services you request. These organisations are obligated to act on our instruction in relation to their use of your personal data and do not have any control over your data in their own right. We make sure anyone who provides a service for the Bush Theatre enters into an agreement with us and meets our standards for data security. They will not use your data for anything other than the clearly defined purpose relating to the service that they are providing.

There are certain circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. These are as follows:

• Processing card payments – these companies may process payment card details and your card billing address
  • WorldPay (WorldPay (UK) Ltd, The Walbrook Building, 25 Walbrook, London, EC4N 8AF, UK)
  • Stripe (7th Floor, 211 Old Street, London EC1V 9NR, UK)
• Processing direct debits – these companies may process your bank details inclduing name on bank account, bank account number, sort code
  • EazyCollect (Eazy Collect Serices Ltd., 1 Tebbit Mews, Winchcombe Street, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL52 2NF, UK)
• Sending emails (marketing and transactional) – these companies may process your name, title and email address in order to produce e-marketing campaigns
  • DotDigital (dotdigital EMEA Limited, No. 1 London Bridge, London, SE1 9BG, UK)
• Processing online sales and CRM – these companies process your email address, preferred title, name, payment card details, billing address, postal address(es), your phone number(s), any access requirements, Gift Aid preferences / declaration
  • Spektrix (Spektrix Ltd., Castle House, Spektrix, 37- 45 Paul St, London EC2A 4LS, UK)
• Sending e-tickets, emails and text messages (SMS) – these companies process your email address, preferred title, name, and phone number
  • CrowdEngage (George Court, Bartholomew’s Walk, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4JW)
  • Crowd Engage also offer the option of purchasing refreshments and merchandise directly through their system.
• Printing direct mail (brochures) – these companies process your name, preferred title, and postal address
  • iVisit Media Ltd (71 Central Street, London, EC1V 8AB, UK)
• Providing us with audience analytics, segmentation and data insights:
  • Arts Council England for the purposes of the Illuminate initiative. Data policy.
  • The Audience Agency for the purposes of the Audience Finder initiative. Privacy policy.
• Where you have agreed, with named third party organisations – if you ticked the relevant opt-in box when you purchased tickets, we may supply your personal information to that specific organisation only (name and email address), for instance to co-producers.
• Where required to do so (for example, if required to do so by the ‘know your donor’ principles under charity law or a court order), or when requested by the police or a regulatory or government authority investigating illegal activities

The Bush Theatre is not responsible for the privacy notices and practices of other websites even if accessed using links from www.bushtheatre.co.uk and recommends that you check the policy of each website you visit and contact its owner or the Data team if you have any concerns or questions.

Despite all our precautions, no data transmission over the internet is 100% secure. So, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us and so wish to draw your attention to the fact that you do so at your own risk.

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How do we protect your data?

We’re committed to protecting the personal information you entrust to us. We adopt robust and appropriate technologies and policies to protect it from unauthorised access and improper use e.g. your online account is encrypted and our own network is protected.

The Bush Theatre may transfer your data to the USA to organizations such as Meta, Google or IBM. The USA has weaker data protection laws and therefore we will ensure that only organisations who are a part of the Data Privacy Framework will handle your personal information. More details.

Your debit and credit card information

If you use your credit or debit 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 Security Standard (PCI-DSS). You can find more information about this standard here.

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How long will we keep your information for?

Where we are able, we will keep your information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice and to fulfil our legal obligations. The retention period that we will keep your personal data for will vary according to the purpose.

For example, if you have signed up to receive emails from us, we will only keep your personal data for as long as you subscribe to our mailing list. Once you have opted out, the only information we will keep is your email address, to ensure we don’t email you again. If you have an account on our systems for making purchases only we will retain your details for seven years after the most recent purchase.

• Marketing lists:
  If you sign up to one of our marketing lists, we will retain your details for as long as we still have your ongoing consent. If we no longer have your consent we may retain your details on a suppression list to ensure that we continue to comply with your wishes.
• Your account:
  If you have an account on our systems for making purchases (either created by yourself via our website, or created by us on your behalf when you make a purchase over the phone or in person), we will retain your details for seven years after the most recent purchase or donation.
  
• Website analytics data:
  We use various services to provide us with statistics about how people use our website. The data that they provide us is not used to identify any particular visitor to our website. Full details of our providers and links to their Privacy Policies (which outline retention periods) are available in our cookie policy.
  

For further information about how long we will keep your information, please contact the General Management team using the contact details outlined in this notice.

If there are aspects of your record that are inaccurate or that you would like to remove, you can usually do this by logging in to your account through our website.

Any objections you make to any processing of your data will be stored against your record on our system so that we can comply with your requests.

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What are your rights to your personal information?

You should find it easy to access and amend the personal information that we hold on you, or request that we stop contacting you. It’s your data and we want to make sure you feel in control of it.

If you have an online account with us, you can amend your personal details and email contact preferences at any time. Simply sign in on the web site and access your account by selecting your name at the top of the page.

• Right of Access:
  You have a right to ask if we hold information about you, and if we do you have a right to request a copy of that data. You can request full details of personal information we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998, or after 25 May 2018, The General Data Protection Regulation. Please send a description of the information you would like to see, together with proof of your identity to [email protected].
• Right of Rectification:
  You have a right to correct any information that we have about you that is incorrect. You can do this by signing in to the website and accessing your account details or if you don’t have an account or if you prefer to, you can contact us by phoning, emailing or writing using our contact details below.
• Right of Erasure:
  You have the right to ask us to remove data we have about you, unless we need to retain it for legal reasons (such as details of a Gift Aid declaration), technical reasons (if you have asked us not to contact you, we will need to store your information on a suppression list to ensure we comply with your wishes) or we have an outstanding obligation to you (for instance you have booked tickets to an upcoming show).
• Right to Withdraw Consent:
  If we ask for your consent to do something (like send you marketing emails), you have the right to revoke that consent at any time. You can do this by signing in to the website and accessing your account details or if you don’t have an account or if you prefer to, you can contact us by phoning, emailing or writing using our contact details below. Every email that we send you on the basis of your consent will have an opt-out/unsubscribe link that you can also use to revoke your consent.
• Right to lodge a complaint:
  In the first instance we would ask that you contact us first so we have an opportunity to put things right, but ultimately you have the right to lodge a formal complaint with the regulator. If you are unhappy with our response you can contact The Information Commissioner’s Office, via their online reporting system: ico.org.uk/concerns.

Should you wish to exercise your rights, we request that you contact us and provide the email address on your account, and either the postcode of the address in your account or the last four numbers of the phone number in your account.

Additionally, please provide as much information as possible about the nature of your contact with us to help us locate your records. We will aim to respond to your request within one month, and we may need to request further details from you to validate your identity and request.

By email: [email protected]

By phone: 020 8743 5050

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Updates or Changes to the Privacy Policy and Further Information

The last update to the policy was made on 2nd August 2024.

This policy is under regular review so may change at any time. It may be updated to take into account changes at the Bush Theatre or to reflect changes to regulation or legislation.

Updates to this policy will be posted on this page. We will also inform you of significant changes where we hold an appropriate email address for you.

By continuing to use our services you will be deemed to have seen and understood such changes.

Further information on data protection regulations and laws can be found here:

Data Protection: ico.org.uk/for-the-public

Fundraising Regulator: fundraisingregulator.org.uk/code

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