PURPOSE
We often collect personal information as part of the work we make. For example, we may ask for an email address to send details of how to take part. We may also gather feedback and collect data about how audiences engage with our work. This helps us to understand audience behaviour, and helps us find ways to improve our work in the future.
We also collect information through our websites and social channels to help us understand who our audiences are. This helps us to communicate better about what we do, and to find ways to engage overlooked and hard-to-reach audiences.
As part of our work, the information we collect may also be used in research projects to provide data for researchers and academics that we collaborate with and to report on the impact of our work to commissioners and funders.
In order to do these things, we may share information with third parties. However, we will never sell your information. We are committed to protecting your personal information, and to being transparent about what information we hold and how we use it.
The purpose of this policy is to set out the ways we will manage your data – responsibly and in line with our legal obligations – and how you can opt out from sharing your information if you choose to.
This policy explains:
- What information we collect
- How we use your information
- How we store your information
- How we may contact you
- Situations where we may disclose information to third parties
- Your rights and how you can opt-out
- How to contact us
WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT
On our websites and mailing list
Our websites, including project microsites, use tracking technologies such as cookies and pixels to collect anonymous usage statistics. This includes what browser you use, what country you visited our site from, what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got there and what you clicked on. These do not collect any personal information that can be used by us to identify you.
When you sign up to our mailing list and read our newsletter, we collect information about what emails you open, what you click on, and what country you opened the email from. We may also store information about what work you have taken part in when you join.
When you make a donation through our website or buy something from our shop, we’ll store the personal information you give us such as your name, email address, postal address, and telephone number. We will also store a record of your purchases and donations.
As part of our work
We may ask you for personal information – for example, your name, phone number or your email address – to facilitate your taking part in our work. We may do this in person at an event, via an app or project microsite or via a third party ticketing service such as a venue’s box office.
And, as part of the work, we may collect data about your participation – for example, your use of a mobile app, website or the SMSs you might send and receive. We do this to understand how you engaged with the work and to help us find ways to improve it.
In some cases, our work will request additional permissions to use information that you give. For example, to use recordings or messages you create within the work itself, or to add an email that you provide to our mailing list. In these cases, we will always make these uses explicit and provide a means to opt out.
From social platforms
When you connect with us via social platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok), we gather anonymous sstatistics from these platforms that tell us what content our followers engage with.
HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
We process personal information in the following ways that are within our legitimate organisational interests:
We use tracking tools – for example, Google Analytics on our websites and Mailchimp Reports on our email list – to understand what content you interact with. These tools generate anonymous usage statistics which help us to improve how we use our website and email list to communicate the work that we do.
We may also use tracking information – for example, from TikTok and Meta pixels to help us identify users who are similar to our audiences, target the adverts that we serve, and ensure they are relevant to new and existing users. Personal information shared with third parties for these purposes is pseudonymised to protect it.
We use contact details that you give us when you take part in our work to facilitate your participation, to ask for feedback, and – where you have given us permission – to communicate with you about our work in the future. To do this, we may share your contact details with a third-party service – for example, Mailchimp to send you emails or Twilio to send and receive SMS.
We analyse data from your participation in our work – for example, from interaction logs or text message histories – to learn about audience behaviour. We may share this information in an anonymised form with researchers. This helps us to improve our work and to inform future works. We may also use anonymised forms of this information to talk about our work to the public, to communicate to audiences and to report to commissioners.
When you provide information to make a payment to us, we process these details with a third-party payment service, e.g. Stripe.
We may also use publicly available information about you from sources such as public registers, online (including records that you have made public on social media) or the electoral roll. This information helps us to communicate with you in a relevant way, in particular when we are approaching you about potential philanthropic support. This enables us to raise funds sooner and in a more tailored way than we otherwise would.
Lastly, we may analyse data we hold about you in order to identify and prevent fraud.
In all of the above cases, we will always keep your rights and interests at the forefront. 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 below. Where information is used via third parties, please use the links throughout this document to update your preferences.
HOW WE STORE YOUR INFORMATION
We put in place appropriate safeguards – through procedures and the technologies that we use – to keep your personal information as secure as possible.
We ensure that any third parties we use for processing your personal information do the same.
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).
Find out about the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
HOW WE MAY CONTACT YOU
We aim to communicate with you in ways that are relevant, timely and respectful. To do this we use data that we have stored about you, such as what events you have booked for in the past, as well as any preferences you may have told us about.
For email communications, we use your opt-in consent to be contacted in this way as a legal basis (for example, when you join our mailing list on our website). We will give you an opportunity to opt out of receiving our email communications every time we contact you. Alternatively, you can use the contact details at the end of this policy to let us know if you no longer wish to hear from us.
We use the same opt-in consent for receiving email communications as a legal basis to occasionally include information about supporting Blast Theory in our communications. If you’d prefer not to receive information about supporting us but want to continue receiving general news about Blast Theory, you can contact us using the 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.
THIRD PARTIES
Under no circumstances will we ever sell your personal information.
However, there are circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information to third parties. We will only do this where we are satisfied that your information is secure and will not be used for purposes other than those agreed by us.
These are as follows:
- To our own service providers and project partners who process your information on our behalf and on our instruction to deliver our work. For example, to an SMS messaging service, a ticketing system provider or a venue where you are taking part in our work. In these cases, we require that third parties comply strictly with our instructions, and with data protection laws.
- To online platforms such as Google, Meta or TikTok, in order to understand our audiences and how they engage with us online. Personal information data shared with third parties for these purposes is pseudonymised to protect it.
- In an anonymous form to commissioners, project partners, researchers and general audiences. For example, in the form of audience statistics and feedback reports that help us learn from our work, share best practices, or document the impact of our work.
- Lastly, we may share your information where we are under a duty to disclose your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies)
.
See below for details about how information is shared with specific third parties:
We use Google Analytics to determine how popular parts of our websites are, to determine if you have been to the website before, and to securely and anonymously record the value of any purchases you make on our website. Google analytics sets cookies which will stay active for a number of years and identify on your computer that you have visited our website.
We use Vimeo for providing video trailers, clips and other videos across our website. Vimeo sets cookies in videos that we embed which may stay active for a number of years.
We use Meta & TikTok Pixels to deliver you relevant ads and to analyse our website traffic. We use their ‘Custom Audiences’ and ‘Lookalike Audiences’ tools to deliver advertisements to you across both platforms based on email addresses, video views, app downloads and other activity that we have collected.
Read the terms of use for Meta’s ‘Custom Audiences’
Read information on TikTok’s personalised ads
Learn how to opt out of receiving advertisements from us based on the information we collect from you via these platforms by updating your Meta ad preferences
HotJar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ website experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this allows us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.
Hotjar privacy information https://www.hotjar.com/privacy/
We use MailChimp to manage our mailing list and for staying in touch with you.
Read Mailchimp’s privacy policy and explanation of your rights and options to opt-out
We use a third party payment service called ‘Stripe’ to process all card payments and no financial information is stored on our servers.
Read Stripe’s terms of service agreement and privacy policy
YOUR RIGHTS AND OPTING OUT
You have a right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in this data corrected. Please use the contact details at the end of this policy if you would like to exercise this right.
Reset or opt-out of cookies on this website
Learn how to update your ‘Do Not Track’ settings to change what tracking you allow in your browser:
Read more about tracking technologies used on our site
HOW TO CONTACT US
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 processing of your personal information that we carry out for our legitimate organisational interests.
Blast Theory
Unit 5, 20 Wellington Road
Portslade, Brighton
East Sussex, BN41 1DN
+44 1273 413 455
info at blasttheory.co.uk
COPYRIGHT
Unless stated otherwise, the content and resources provided on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.