Privacy policy

Last updated: 12.11.20

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 use your information in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information. This policy explains:

How we may collect information about you
What information we may collect about you
How and why we may use that information
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
Information about NHS Test and Trace

To find out more about our use of cookies to improve your use of our website:

Please visit our cookie policy

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

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 1221968.

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.

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect your information when you interact with us. This could include booking tickets online, by phone, or in person, purchasing a Membership, making a donation, hiring the venue, or ordering an item from our online shop. It could also be when you sign up to receive updates from us by email and other digital channels. We also monitor how audiences use the website to help us understand how it could be improved.

We collect personal information when you:

Create an account at www.bushtheatre.co.uk which allows you to:

Book tickets and buy gift vouchers
Join as a member of Bush Connect or Bush Local
Join as a Star Supporter
Make a donation
Sign up to receive e-newsletters
Buy playtexts, books or a script subscription

Book tickets and buy gift vouchers
Join as a member of Bush Connect or Bush Local
Join as a Star Supporter
Make a donation
Sign up to receive e-newsletters
Buy playtexts, books or a script subscription
Attend a fundraising event, workshop, rehearsal reading or a sharing of the Bush’s work
Give us your access requirements

Book tickets and buy gift vouchers
Join as a member of Bush Connect of Bush Local
Join as a Star Supporter
Make a donation
Sign up to receive e-newsletters
Buy playtexts, books or a script subscription
Attend a fundraising event, workshop, rehearsal reading or a sharing of the Bush’s work
Give us your access requirements

Join as a Star Supporter
Make a donation
Attend a fundraising event, workshop, rehearsal reading or a sharing of the Bush’s work
Send us a job application form

When you email us with any information relevant to your booking, including:

Access requirements
Dietary requirements for fundraising events
Feedback on your visit to the Bush Theatre

When you email us to:

Apply for a job at the Bush Theatre
Take part in a community project

When you visit our website:

Through your IP address given to us by your browser
Through cookies – see our Cookies Policy for further information

When you purchase tickets to our shows via a third party

Via Social Media

We may collect some personal data (name, address, phone number, booking details) when you enter competitions or give us booking details for customer support via social media. We also collect and track anonymised data about our social media audiences to better understand the ‘groups’ of people who engage with us online. We use this to ensure we engage with audiences and groups of people who are new to us.

Attend an event by invitation, such as a fundraising or supporters event, the Annual Fundraising Quiz, the Lone Star Dinner or an event for teachers.

Via publicly available information such as:

Google
Companies House
Charities Commission
Donor Boards
Information published in articles / newspapers

What types of information do we collect and where from?

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 where and when it is gathered:

Information we obtain directly from you

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.

We also keep a record of your interactions with us in our database, such as what shows or events you have purchased tickets to, when you have had an active membership, any projects you may have participated in or supported, and whether you have received, opened or clicked through any emails we may have sent.

When visiting our website we may collect the following information:

Automatically populated IP address: a public IP address is a unique number which allows a computer, group of computers or other internet connected device to browse the internet. The log file records the time and date of your visit, the pages that were requested, the referring website (if provided) and your internet browser version. This information is collected to help diagnose and manage the website, to audit the geographical make-up of users, and to establish how they have arrived at the website.
Cookies: for further information about Cookies and how the Bush Theatre uses them, please read our Cookie Policy

If you contact us with feedback online, by email, by phone or in person we may keep a record of the correspondence on our database to help us improve customer service

Third Party Organizations

Your information may be shared with us by independent organisations, for example other arts organisations and co-producers that the Bush Theatre has worked with. These organisations should not pass on your data to us without your knowledge and only if it is required in the performance of a contract. The third party will require your permission in order to share your data with us for marketing purposes and we will always notify you within 30 days of receipt of your data. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provide your information to understand fully how they will process and safeguard your data.

Social Media

Depending on your settings and/or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, you may give us permission to access information from those accounts or services. The majority of this behaviour is anonymised. For more information on how to control your privacy settings for these services, go to the following links:

Facebook – Privacy Policy

Twitter – Privacy Policy

Pinterest – Privacy Policy

YouTube – Privacy Policy

Soundcloud – Privacy Policy

Snapchat – Privacy Policy

WhatsApp – Privacy Policy

Information available publicly

We may collect information such as job history, trusteeship, political preferences, locality and philanthropic activities from places such as Companies House, Google, and information that has been published in articles / newspapers.

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

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 Audience Finder initiative 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.

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.

Bush Theatre fundraising endeavour

The Bush Theatre relies on the support of generous individuals to make its programme of new work productions, talent development and community engagement a reality. Indeed each year the Bush needs to raise over 25% of its income from philanthropic individuals and foundations as well as companies. In order to sustain our unique programme and within the full respect of legislation and best-practice guidance (you can see more at the end of the section), we strive to understand our audience in order to build tailored relationships with prospective individual, corporate and trust supporters whilst relying on current supporters to continue donating towards the Bush’s work.

General audience

When buying tickets, making donations or purchasing a membership online or in person, you have the possibility to opt in to receive information about supporting the Bush Theatre. You can also make changes to your preferences in the Your Account section online or by telling our Box Office or Development team on the phone or in person. By opting in you will receive relevant communications including how to support a specific aspect of our programme. We may also invite you to special events giving a closer access to the programme and creative teams or staff member we think you might enjoy meeting.

We may also use booking patterns, individual connections, publicly sourced information and images to help identify a small group of 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. 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. These could include opportunities to get closer to our work by joining our one of our groups of supporters or other relevant fundraising initiatives.

Our current supporters

We will also ask all our supporters to consent to receive specific fundraising digital communications. 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.

To improve the experience of our supporters and tailor our communications to their needs and interests, we may analyse geographic, demographic and publicly available information relating to you in order to better understand your interests. We will use this to send them relevant information about the Bush Theatre, its work and future plan. We might also send them the relevant information for them to consider supporting the Bush or an aspect of its work further.

Prospective supporters

In addition, we invite some people who might be interested in joining one of our supporter groups to special events eg. drinks receptions, readings of new work, community sharings or to tell them about extra benefits including priority booking. Guests we invite might include current supporters, people who have given donations in the past, audiences who attend shows and events regularly, audiences who have identified specific preferences on their accounts, our Board and staff. We make sure that our invitations are appropriate by conducting research and analysing our database which might include looking at audience members’ ticket history, address and previous donations as well as publicly available information (including newspaper articles, listed Directorships, social media profiles and biographies on employers’ websites).

We also use research from a number of different publicly available sources to identify potential supporters. This may also 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, such as LinkedIn.

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.

Research may include investigation of potential donations from potential trust and corporate partners for compliance and risk which may lead the Bush to refuse a gift if we can reasonably conclude that its acceptance would be more likely to be detrimental to the organisation than its refusal.

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.

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:

Name on card, credit card number, billing address, CVV amount of transaction and order number with Worldpay Payment Gateway in order to process credit card transactions
Name on bank account, bank account number, sort code, amount of direct debit, frequency and customer number with EazyCollect in order to process direct debit transactions
Name and email address with Dotmailer in order to produce e-marketing campaigns and pre & post show emails (e-marketing campaigns require consent)
Audience survey answers with Google Surveys in order to collect and create reports from anonymous audience survey data (audience survey completion requires consent)
Service providers who aggregate data in order for us to do benchmark reporting across the industry, specifically:
The Audience Agency for the purposes of the Audience Finder initiative. For more information on the data they collect, please refer to the following links on their website: Data Collection in Audience Finder and Data Control in Audience Finder
Named third party organisations if you ticked the relevant opt-in box when you purchased tickets. In these instances, we may supply your personal information to that specific organisation only
We will only supply full name and email address in these data shares and only with your consent
Other organisations such as competition organisers if you choose to take part in such activities that need administration by third parties and you choose to opt in for contact from those organisations.
We will only supply full name and email address in these data shares and only with your consent
Our ticketing system provider Spektrix who provide support should our ticketing system require maintenance
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.

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 unauthorized access and improper use e.g. your online account is encrypted and our own network is protected.

As part of the services offered to you through the Bush Theatre website, the personal information you provide may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). By way of example, this may happen if any of the computer servers used to host the website are located in a country outside of the EEA. If the Bush Theatre transfers your personal information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this privacy notice.

The Bush Theatre may transfer your data to the USA to organizations such as Facebook, Google or IBM. The USA has weaker data protection laws than that of the EEA and therefore we will ensure that only organisations who are a part of the EU privacy shield initiative will handle your personal information. More details on this certification can be found at www.privacyshield.gov/welcome

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.

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. Whereas if you have pledged a legacy to the Bush Theatre, we will hold your details until notified by your will executors.

We will also increase restrictions on access to your data, when it is no longer needed. For example if purchasing a ticket only, after seven years from the date of your last transaction your customer record will not be included in customer lists, reports or searches.

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 you ask us to stop sending direct marketing communications to you, we will retain the information required (e.g. name, address or email address) to ensure we adhere with such requests.

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.

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.

Every email we send to you will include details on how to change your communications preferences or unsubscribe from future communications.

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].

At any time you have the right to ask the Bush Theatre to amend or to stop how it uses your personal information including for marketing purposes. 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. You have the right to get information held about you by us corrected. If you have any concern about the accuracy of your personal data, please let us know using the below contact details. If you would like us to remove the personal information we hold about you, please contact us using the below contact details.

By email: [email protected]

By phone: 020 8743 5050

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, The Information Commissioner’s Office – www.ico.org.uk

Are you under 18?

If you are under 18, please ensure that you obtain your parent/guardian’s consent beforehand whenever you provide personal information to the website. If you don’t have that consent, you must not provide personal information to us.

NHS Test and Trace

To support NHS Test and Trace (which is part of the Department for Health and Social Care) in England, we have been mandated by law to collect and keep a limited record of staff, customers and visitors who come onto our premises for the purpose of contact tracing.

By maintaining records of staff, customers and visitors, and sharing these with NHS Test and Trace where requested, we can help to identify people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus.

Visitors to the building

As a visitor to the Bush Theatre you will be asked to provide some basic information and contact details when you enter the Bush Theatre building, by completing a form. The following information will be collected:

the names of all customers or visitors, or if it is a group of people, the name of one member of the group
a contact phone number for each customer or visitor, or for the lead member of a group of people
date of visit and arrival time and departure time

The Bush Theatre as the data controllers for the collection of your personal data, will be responsible for compliance with data protection legislation for the period of time it holds the information. When that information is requested by the NHS Test and Trace service, the service would at this point be responsible for compliance with data protection legislation for that period of time.

NHS Test and Trace have asked us to retain this information for 21 days from the date of your visit, to enable contact tracing to be carried out by NHS Test and Trace during that period. We will only share information with NHS Test and Trace if it is specifically requested by them.

The information we collect for the purpose of contact tracing will not be used for any other purposes and will be destroyed by us 21 days after the date of your visit.

Ticket bookers

In addition, during the coronavirus pandemic, if NHS Test and Trace request information about visitors to our building, we will share the following data for each customer who booked a ticket for a date which NHS Test and Trace enquire about:

Name
Contact phone number, email address or, if neither are available, then postal address
Date of performance attended
Time of performance attended

The use of your information is covered by the General Data Protection Regulations Article 6 (1) (c) – a legal obligation to which we as a venue are subject to. The legal obligation to which we’re subject means that we’re mandated by law to support the NHS Test and Trace service in order to help maintain a safe operating environment and to help fight any local outbreak of coronavirus.

Your information will always be stored and used in compliance with the relevant data protection legislation. For more information on how the NHS Test and Trace system works click here.

Updates or Changes to the Privacy Policy and Further Information

This notice was updated on 12.11.20. It may be updated to take into account changes at the Bush Theatre or for example to reflect changes to regulation or legislation.

Updates to this policy will be posted on this page – please check back from time to time. We will also inform you of any changes where we hold an appropriate email address for you.

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

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

Fundraising regulator: www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk/code-of-fundraising-practice/code-of-fundraising-practice